Betrayal
by Tex-chan
Summary: A betrayal by a trusted friend sends Aya and Yohji on the run from Kritiker. Can Aya stay alive long enough to untangle the sticky web into which Fate has thrust them? Part 2 of a Trilogy. Part 1: Nowhere Man ... Part 3: Redemption
1. Default Chapter

**CHAPTER 1**

_**Note:** _This is the second story in my "Nowhere Man" trilogy. The first story, "Nowhere Man" is posted here on ff.net. The third story, "Redemption", is complete, and I hope to post it in the near future. I don't think there are really any spoilers in here, other than Aya's "real" name. One thing: I mention soccer season and have it sort of coinciding with Ken's birthday. I don't know anything about soccer, or when or how long soccer season runs ... or if there even is a soccer season ... so I hope I haven't inadvertently done anything offensive by having Ken invite Aya to a soccer game.If anyone has any thoughts about this, please e-mail me, so that I can change the story to be a bit more accurate. Thanks. _~Tex-chan._

The early morning sun flowed into the kitchen, bouncing off of pale yellow walls and engulfing the room in bright, cheerful, golden light that eliminated the need for incandescent lighting. Omi paused in the doorway and quietly watched Aya. The older man was sitting at the kitchen table, his back to the door, reading the morning edition of the local newspaper. The young blonde smiled slightly as Aya rattled the paper irritably, and mumbled under his breath about one of the stories he'd just read, while slowly, almost absently, stirring his coffee. The spoon made a soft clinking sound as it struck the sides of the cup. Omi shook his head and chuckled under his breath. Aya drank his coffee black, and, for the life of him, Omi couldn't figure exactly why he always insisted on having a spoon in the cup. As far as the younger boy could tell, the spoon was completely unnecessary, but, yet, it was always there. Omi suppressed another giggle as Aya brought the cup to his lips and, without bothering to remove the spoon, took a noisy slurp. He didn't know exactly why, but the idea of Aya, who always seemed so perfect and controlled, slurping coffee like a "normal" person struck him as exceedingly funny.

Omi shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other, careful to avoid the squeaky spots in the floorboards near the doorway, as he debated over entering the kitchen for his usual morning cup of coffee and muffin before heading off to school. He had been surprised to even find the redhead here, and Aya looked so peaceful and content that Omi was reluctant to disturb him.

Just as he had almost decided to skip breakfast, Omi saw Aya pick up the coffee cup for another sip. This time, though, his hand slipped, and he wasn't able to hold onto the mug. He lifted it slightly off of the table, but it fell back down again with a fairly loud thunk, spilling hot liquid over his hand in the process. The boy frowned as he watched Aya put his hand in his mouth to suck at the burned spot, all the while glaring at the traitorous cup and mumbling curses under his breath. Omi mentally added up the days since Aya's last mission. As closely as he could figure, it had been almost two months since Yohji's unexpected no-show had forced that solo mission on the Weiss leader, which also meant that Aya had been sick for that long. Although the redhead insisted that he was fine and fully recovered, Omi knew he was lying. It was true that Aya was healing, but much more slowly than any of them had expected. Only in the past week had Aya insisted on doing his share in the shop. He had begun to work his normal shifts, but Omi suspected the redhead's actions were motivated more by guilt than by any recovery he might have made. Aya had never been a talkative person, so he always worked without complaint. But, by the time each shift was through, it was obvious that he was exhausted and drained, mentally and physically. Omi couldn't even count the number of times in the past week that Yohji had taken dinner to the redhead's room, only to return with an almost-full plate, stating that Aya had fallen asleep without finishing his meal. And, now, watching him with the coffee cup, it seemed that he hadn't really regained as much strength as they had believed. As ridiculous as he knew it was, Omi had always thought of Aya as some kind of invincible superman, and it worried the boy to see him struggling like this. He knew Yohji and Ken were worried too, but no one had broached the subject with Aya. It was almost as if the four assassins had reached a tacit agreement to never discuss it, but, as Omi watched Aya once again drop the mug onto the table, he decided they couldn't continue avoiding the topic.

Before Omi could step into the kitchen and make his presence known, a low, threatening growl from under the table brought Aya's attention toward the door. The redhead twisted around in his chair to frown slightly at Omi and ask, "How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long," Omi lied as he entered the room. He was careful to keep a fairly decent distance between himself and the dog, which was still growling.

The dog had been lying at Aya's feet under the table, and Omi hadn't noticed it upon stopping in the doorway. Now, though, as the boy inched quietly into the room, the large beast unfolded itself and stiffly stalked to stand between Aya's chair and Omi. It actually seemed to materialize right out of the shadows under the table, and, once it had come to a stop between them, it glared at the boy with baleful, hate-filled, yellow eyes and bared its teeth. The hair on the back of its neck was raised, and it looked menacing enough to stop the boy in his tracks, just inside the kitchen door.

"I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of you," Omi muttered as he stared at the dog.

Despite the mantra, the boy couldn't keep from shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot, which elicited a new series of low growls from the animal. Omi sighed and glared at the dog as he thought about how much he hated it. It was a fairly new addition to their little family. Hank had shown up with it a couple of weeks ago, explaining that it was his gift to them, to thank them for all they had done for him. Omi could still remember how Yohji had adamantly refused Hank's generosity. The tall blonde had argued that none of them had the room or the time to properly care for a pet, but Hank had stood his ground and countered all of Yohji's arguments by explaining that dogs weren't that difficult to care for, and that it would be good to have around the shop, for protection. When Yohji hadn't been convinced, Hank had ducked his head and quietly explained that they had to take the dog. In response to Yohji's questioning, he had finally confessed that he had gotten it from a man he had "done some work for" when he lived on the streets. This man bred fighting dogs, and had decided to destroy this particular animal because it was too friendly and gentle-natured to ever succeed as a fighter. Just as Yohji was about to refuse, Aya had appeared from the back room. He had heard most of Hank's story, and he had cut off Yohji's protests by quietly commenting that the dog appeared to have nowhere else to go, and that it was rude to refuse a gift given in gratitude. At that, Yohji had shrugged and thrown up his hands, silently conceding defeat, and the four Weiss assassins had acquired a new pet.

Hank christened the dog "Bubba", despite Aya's strenuous objections. Bubba had a stocky, muscular build and a large, squared head. He had big, drooping ears, a cropped tail, and incredibly huge feet, which, Hank explained, indicated that he still had a lot of growing to do. The dog was completely black, except for deep-set, yellow eyes. None of the assassins had ever seen an animal quite like him, and Hank had explained that Bubba was a mixture of Rottweiler and Pit Bull. Although he was still really just a puppy, barely nine months old, Bubba was already fairly large, weighing in at almost 80 pounds.

The dog seemed to take an almost immediate liking to Aya. Bubba followed the redhead everywhere, never straying more than a few feet away from him. The dog even waited outside the bathroom when Aya was in there, nose pressed up against the crack under the closed door, as if he could pull his favorite person out through that small opening if he just snuffled hard enough. At first, Aya hadn't wanted anything to do with the animal. Eventually, though, it seemed that Bubba either wore him down or, somehow, managed to break through Aya's icy façade, and the two of them settled down into a comfortable pattern. Omi could still remember the day that Yohji had come into the kitchen to announce, in a surprised voice, that he had checked in on Aya only to find both him and the dog sleeping in the redhead's bed. 

Although Bubba worshiped the ground Aya walked on, that adoration definitely didn't extend to the rest of the household. The dog was extremely protective of the redhead, and it menaced and threatened anyone who, in its opinion, got too close to Aya, including his housemates. Bubba's yellow eyes seemed to glow whenever he was angry, which, as far as Omi had seen, seemed to be pretty much all of the time. After creeping around Bubba for the past two weeks as if they were walking on eggshells, all Aya's teammates had concluded that there was no way anyone could have ever pegged this particular dog as "sweet" and "gentle-natured". He and Ken had both complained to Yohji about the dog on several occasions, but the tall blonde, after explaining that he didn't like it either, had shrugged and told them to just bear with things and try to stay out of Bubba's way. When they had continued to complain, Yohji had cut them off by saying that Aya liked the dog, and he thought having Bubba around was good for the quiet man. Omi had noticed subtle changes in Aya since Bubba started living with them. The redhead seemed less guarded and icy, and more relaxed than Omi could ever remember seeing him. Still, the boy was tired of sneaking around in his own home. He fervently wished that Bubba would just figure out that the rest of them lived here, and that they weren't a threat to Aya.

Another low growl brought Omi's attention away from his thoughts and back to Bubba. The boy shifted nervously from one foot to the other and cleared his throat as he said, "Um Aya?"

"Yeah?" Aya asked. He had turned his back on Omi once again and resumed reading his paper, seemingly oblivious to the dog's threatening behavior, but, at the sound of Omi's voice, he twisted back around in his chair to give the boy a questioning look.

"Um the dog?" Omi asked, inclining his head ever so slightly to indicate Bubba, who was still growling threateningly.

In response, Aya snapped his fingers. Bubba whined and moved back under the table to sit in front of Aya. He placed his head in the redhead's lap and gazed up at him with adoring eyes. Aya, who had immediately turned back to the paper, reached down and absently scratched behind the dog's ears, eliciting another pleasure-filled whine from the animal. Omi shook his head as he watched Aya pet the dog. Despite the subtle changes he had noticed, he was still surprised to see the stoic man openly showing affection for another living creature. The boy moved freely into the kitchen, no longer paying any attention to the dog, which had completely forgotten him. Once Aya indicated to Bubba that a person was acceptable, the dog dismissed them completely --- until the next time he saw them. Hank kept assuring all of them that Bubba was very clever and that he would eventually get used to them all. For his part, Omi had his doubts. From what he had seen, Bubba had the attention span of a gnat.

Omi silently dropped his book bag near the door leading to the outside, and moved to take another mug down from the cupboard near the stove. He quickly poured his coffee, mixing in liberal amounts of sugar and milk, retrieved a muffin from the breadbox, and then moved to sit at the table, across from Aya. The redhead's face was hidden by the newspaper, and Omi, who had already decided to talk to Aya about the state of his health, silently began to pick his muffin into little pieces as he debated on the best way of bringing up what he guessed would be an uncomfortable and, possibly, volatile subject. He had always had trouble talking to Aya. It wasn't really that he was afraid of the swordsman --- well, not exactly. It was just that Aya always seemed so unapproachable and closed off to the rest of them. Omi sighed and looked up at the ceiling, fervently wishing Yohji were here. The tall blonde was the only person who really seemed at ease around Aya.

At the sound of Omi's loud sigh, Aya flipped down one corner of his paper and peered over it at the boy. He frowned as he watched Omi stare at the table top and silently shred the muffin in front of him. The boy looked as if he wasn't even aware of what his fingers were doing.

Aya rattled the paper loudly, bringing Omi's attention away from the table, and asked, "You gonna eat that or pick it to death?"

Omi looked down at the muffin and laughed absently, "Sorry. I was just thinking." He looked back to the table almost immediately.

Aya frowned and watched Omi for a couple of additional minutes. Finally, he sighed quietly, folded his paper, and placed it carefully on the table in front of him. He pulled off his reading glasses and placed them neatly on top of the paper. "Everything OK?" he asked, once again catching Omi's attention.

"Uh yeah," Omi stammered. He took a bite of the muffin and a sip of coffee before continuing, "I was just surprised to find you down here. Lately, it's just been me in the mornings. I thought that Yohji had you under house arrest or something like that until you got well or, until he decided you were well."

Aya surprised Omi by chuckling softly at the boy's little joke. He picked up his coffee cup, using two hands this time, and took a sip before replying, "The stalker is sleeping, so I thought I'd make a small break for freedom. Besides, it's been a while since I've actually gotten to read the paper before Ken gets to it. That idiot always gets it all out of order." He frowned in distaste as he thought about the crumpled, disordered mess in which the ex-goalie normally left the paper.

Omi couldn't help but laugh at the look on Aya's face. You would have thought someone had murdered his best friend or something, instead of just messing up a newspaper.

"You feeling all right, Omi?" Aya asked. His voice broke into Omi's train of thought and dragged the boy's attention back to the redhead's face. Aya frowned at the vacant, exhausted stare in Omi's eyes as he said, "You don't look too good."

"Yeah," Omi said quietly. He ducked his head and blushed in embarrassment at the unexpected inquiry. "I'm just a little tired, I guess. Between researching for missions and exams coming up at school, I haven't been sleeping very much lately. Do you know how Yohji and Ken did last night?"

Aya frowned and rested his elbows on the table, placing his chin in the open palm of one hand. He hated being weak, and he hated not being able to pull his own weight in Weiss' night-time activities. He wasn't supposed to know, but he had discovered that Yohji had covertly told Manx he was to be considered off duty until he was fully recovered. Well, "discovered" wasn't exactly the right word for it; Manx had called him at least once a day for the past two months, hinting that Persia, and, worse, Kritiker, believed he was shirking his duty because he was losing his edge, and, consequently, his usefulness. Aya couldn't count the number of times during the past two months that he had silently wished for Yohji to stop being so overprotective, and to stop doing favors for him. Manx and Persia had, of course, refused to let Weiss stand down until Aya was sufficiently recovered to work, which meant that everyone else had been pulling double duty to make up for his absence. Aya had noticed that the rest of his team was exhausted. He knew it was his fault, and he couldn't shake the guilt he felt over it.

The sound of Omi clearing his throat brought Aya's attention back to the boy, who was watching him worriedly. In response to the question he saw in Omi's eyes, he said, "Oh, uh, fine. The mission went off like clockwork. No injuries. They both got home pretty late, so I think they'll sleep in today. They're both exhausted. The rest will do them good. Yohji looks like he's been on a several day bender, and I know he hasn't even been out drinking or on a date one time in the past two months."

"What about their shifts in the shop?" Omi asked.

"I'll work the shop today with Hank," Aya replied, drumming his fingers softly on the table top.

Omi laughed and almost choked on the bite of muffin he'd just stuffed into his mouth. "Yohji's not gonna like that," he explained as Aya arched one eyebrow in a questioning look.

Aya shrugged. "Yohji's so tired, he'll probably sleep all day. What the stalker doesn't know won't hurt him or me." He paused and watched as Omi drained his coffee and finished off the muffin. "They're going out tonight for Ken's birthday. Yohji told me to let you know, in case you wanted to go."

Omi groaned softly. "Ugh I can't believe I forgot Ken's birthday. I didn't even get him a gift."

Aya waved his hand in front of his face in a dismissive gesture and replied, "Don't worry about it. It's already taken care of. We got him some new soccer cleats, a new ball, and season tickets for his favorite team. Hank picked them up for me yesterday."

"Wow!" Omi exclaimed. "That's a great gift. I can't believe that you remembered to get anything."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aya asked, his voice involuntarily taking on a hurt, defensive tone.

Omi's eyes widened slightly at the hurt he heard in Aya's voice, and he quickly stammered, "No nothing. It's it's just well, not really like you."

Aya frowned as he considered Omi's statement. "Yeah," he finally replied, his voice an embarrassed mumble, "I guess that's true."

He felt distinctly uncomfortable, and he stared at the table slightly in front of the folded paper as he tried to talk his body out of doing what his mind so desperately wanted to do, which was bolt from the kitchen and retreat back upstairs to the solitude of his room. Yohji's efforts during his illness had finally made him realize that the other team members really did care about him, that he wasn't alone, and that he had a place to belong. Consequently, he had decided to make a stab at opening up to them more, to "rejoin the land of the living", as Yohji put it, but he was finding it a lot harder than he would have expected. It seemed that he had closed himself off emotionally for so long that he was out of practice in dealing with other people, and he was beginning to wonder if it was even worth the bother. Things had seemed a lot easier when everyone just steered clear of him.

Finally, he continued, "Well, don't give me too much credit. The season tickets are the real gift. The ball and cleats well, I kind of owed him for those." He glanced up at Omi, and, in response to the question in the boy's eyes, he shrugged and said, "Bubba." He curled his mouth distastefully as he said the dog's name. "He sort of ate Ken's old pair of shoes and the ball, along with Yohji's favorite leather jacket and my favorite sweater. You'd better just pray he doesn't get into your room."

Omi started to laugh, but the serious look on Aya's face stopped him. He paused for a few moments, picking at the empty paper that had previously held the muffin. Finally, he asked, in a soft voice, "Are you really OK, Aya?"

"Yeah," Aya replied. He studied the table in front of him as he continued, "I'm going to tell Manx to take me off the injured list." As Omi started to protest, Aya waved his hand at the boy, cutting him off in mid-sentence. "I don't like the rest of you covering for me. Everyone is exhausted, and it's just a matter of time before someone slips up during a mission. I don't want that on my head. It's been two months. There's no reason for me to be lazing around while the rest of you are beating yourselves up trying to keep up with Persia's demands. Besides, Manx has told me, more than once, that Persia thinks I'm a burnout. They're thinking about retiring me. They haven't come right out and said it yet, but the writing's on the wall for anyone who knows how to read it." 

Omi's eyes widened at Aya's last statement. He wouldn't have ever guessed that Persia would actually threaten Aya, his favorite assassin. Finally, he said, "That can't be right, Aya. I can't believe Persia would retire you any of the rest of us, maybe, but not you. Does Yohji know?"

"Hell, no," Aya replied. "And, you'd best not tell him, either. It's just supposition on my part at this point, and, if I go back on active status, hopefully, it'll remain nothing more than supposition. Plus, that idiot is way too overprotective. If he found out what I think, he'd go off half-cocked and do something stupid, like get himself killed. I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself." He glanced down at his watch, and effectively ended their conversation by saying, "Aren't you late?"

Omi followed Aya's lead and looked at his own watch. "Shit! Yeah. I'd better go. I'm never gonna make it in time, as it is." The boy hurriedly moved toward the sink and dumped the empty coffee cup into it, sighing in frustration. "That means another morning of sitting in the damn principal's office for being late. I swear I already missed so much school while you were sick that they're probably gonna declare me a juvenile delinquent or something."

Aya shook his head and laughed softly, "If they want to consider you a delinquent, I think they have much better reasons than being late for class and skipping school."

Just as he finished speaking, the door creaked open, and Hank stepped into the kitchen from the outside. He shivered and stamped his feet as he removed his shoes and waved at Aya.

"Mornin', Ran Omi. It's colder 'n a witch's tit out there this mornin'," he said, with a smile.

Bubba shot out from under the table with a throaty growl at the sudden intrusion, which prompted Hank to glare at the dog and drawl, "Listen here, mister. You'd best not go forgettin' who saved yer sorry ass."

Bubba stopped as if he had been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat. He stood stiffly in front of Hank for a long few moments, as if he was trying to decide whether the man would taste like chicken. Finally, the dog moved forward and poked his nose into Hank's open hand with a whine of greeting. Hank dropped to his knees to pet Bubba, scratching behind his ears and thumping his sides.

"Great timing," Aya said, rising from his chair and draining his coffee cup. "There's fresh coffee, if you want some. Can you go ahead and open the shop for me? I'm going to drive Omi to school. I'll be back in about thirty minutes or so."

"Sure," Hank replied. He gave Aya a questioning look and said, "I thought Yohji said you couldn't work the morning shift. Isn't he working for you this morning?"

Aya frowned and shrugged. "The stalker's sleeping. He had kind of a hard night last night, so I wouldn't expect him to be down today. Ken, either. So, it's just you and me unless you've got a problem with that?"

Hank laughed and moved to the cupboard to retrieve a coffee mug. "No, no," he replied, waving his hands in the air in front of him. "I've hardly seen you in the past two months, so it'll be good to spend some time with you."

Aya stared in horror as the other man proceeded to pour coffee into the mug and retrieve a muffin from the bread box. When Hank turned around and saw the look on Aya's face, he nervously placed the muffin on the counter, and asked, "What's wrong? Isn't it OK for me to have a muffin?" He looked from Aya to Omi and then said, defensively, "Omi always lets me have one."

"You just petted the dog," Aya said in a tone of utter horror. "Shouldn't you wash your hands?"

Hank shook his head and rolled his eyes at the ceiling as he leaned back against the sink and took a large bite out of the muffin. "You need to loosen up, Ran," he said, laughing, "You sound just like a little, old granny."

Aya glared at Omi when the boy was unable to stifle a giggle at Hank's statement. As he moved toward the door and started to shrug into his coat, Omi protested, "Aya you really don't have to take me. I mean I can walk. It's no problem."

"Don't be stupid," Aya replied as he finished pulling on the coat. "It's cold, and you already look like shit. Besides, you're late, right?" He picked up Omi's book bag and held it out to the boy, clearly putting an end to any argument on Omi's part. As Omi pushed past him to exit their apartment, Aya looked back at Hank, who was still contentedly munching on the muffin. "I'm never eating anything that comes out of that bread box again," he muttered under his breath, exiting the kitchen and pulling the door closed behind him.Bubba sat in the middle of the now-silent kitchen, staring forlornly at the door. The dog whined mournfully and looked as if he had lost his best friend. After a few seconds, the door opened again, and Aya's head popped into the kitchen.

"Well, come on, then," he snapped at the dog.

Hank laughed and reached for another muffin as Bubba happily trotted out of the kitchen after Aya.

****


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

Within about ten minutes of opening the shop, Hank concluded that it would be a very slow, very long day. The previously clear, sunny day had given way to the mother of all rain storms, and he stood at the store's front window for a long time, sipping his fourth cup of coffee and watching the heavens unleash their wrath on the streets and sidewalks within his view. It was raining heavily enough to keep most people indoors, and the streets were almost deserted. The few brave souls who dared to venture out into the downpour scurried along the sidewalk clutching newspapers or brightly-colored umbrellas over their heads. Hank couldn't help but think that the umbrellas were the only spots of color in an otherwise-gray world.

He sighed and leaned his head onto the window's cold glass as he held his warm mug cupped in the palm of his hand and absently twisted his wrist to send the liquid twirling around the cup, just below the rim. Hank thought about how fitting it was for today to end up being a gray, rainy day. It was a perfect match to his own dark, melancholy mood. It had been difficult pretending to be cheerful in front of Ran and Omi, and, although he would normally look forward to spending the day alone with his quiet friend, he had been dreading the redhead's return. He had been haunted by choices and decisions he didn't want to make, but that he knew he couldn't avoid, and he just didn't think he was up to pretending to be in a good mood for the entire day. Besides, Ran was quiet, but he was incredibly perceptive, and Hank was sure he would notice something was wrong.

Hank drained the remnants of his coffee in one long gulp, grimacing as the hot liquid burned its way down his throat, and thought about the events of the past two months. He still considered that night that Ran had stolen his coat to be one of the luckiest of his life. He didn't know what had prompted the younger man to return later to look for him --- maybe guilt over stealing from someone worse off than himself, or a desire to help someone out, or even recognition of a kindred spirit. Hank hadn't known the redhead that long, but he had already figured out that it was impossible to second-guess Ran's motivations or moods. As near as he could tell, that boy was one closed-off, tightly-wound, moody bastard, who could go from a full-out homicidal rage, to something approaching happiness, to the depths of despair and depression within the span of minutes, if not seconds. Although the other guys all seemed to defer to his moods and give him a lot of space most of the time, it was obvious that they had accepted Ran for who and what he was, and Hank had quickly realized that they all looked up to him and genuinely cared about the redhead --- a fact that seemed to have escaped Ran's attention entirely, since the kid seemed bent on destroying himself. Whatever the reason for it, if it hadn't been for Ran's detour back down his alley, Hank knew he would still be sitting down there, selling his soul for just one more drink and praying for his nightmarish life to end.

Ran had taken him in, and, thanks to the redhead's kindness, he had a place to live, a job he enjoyed, and, for the first time in years, friendship. Ran had accepted him at face value, which, Hank had gathered, was something of an oddity for the quiet redhead. Thanks to that, the other guys accepted him, also, and, with the exception of Yohji, who still seemed a bit suspicious of him, they had offered friendship and companionship with no strings attached. Hank had quickly determined that his four new friends were probably not exactly what they appeared to be. The flower shop was decently successful, but he had worked the register enough in the last two months to know that the business' monetary intake couldn't possibly support the lifestyle and expensive toys these four guys had. They had way too much disposable income to just be florists, not to mention the salary they were paying him, which was way too large for the duties he undertook around the store. Most likely, they were involved in something not entirely on the up and up. They kept to themselves too much, and, even though they seemed friendly and open, when you thought about it for a while, you realized that they really didn't reveal anything. Hank had known a lot of men like that during the time he had lived on the street --- hoods, pimps, drug dealers, murderers, and worse. Although he had already decided that his new friends were probably doing something illegal on the side, he had also decided that he didn't care. They had been good to him, and he owed them, especially Ran, everything.

About a month ago, Ran had approached him and told him that he had managed to find his little girl. He hadn't seen Keiko in three years, and he hadn't even known where she was or how she was doing. Hank could remember how overjoyed he had felt at the possibility of just being able to see her, and he remembered the day, a few days after the mysterious announcement, when Ran had taken him to a private school on the other side of town. It had been raining on that day, too, which meant that the kids weren't allowed outside to play. Ran had still been pretty sick at that point, and Hank hadn't wanted to wait around just for the hope of catching one glimpse of Keiko. He remembered telling the redhead that they should just go; they could come back another time. But, Ran had refused. Hank could still picture the sad, far-away look in the younger man's eyes as he had said, _"It's been three years, right? Since you've seen her smile". _The two of them had waited in an alley across the street in the pouring rain until, finally, the school let out for the day, and there, in the midst of the crowds of children running through the rain toward waiting cars and busses, he had seen Keiko. He would have known her anywhere. She was the picture of his sweet Yuki at the same age.

Hank could feel the smile spreading involuntarily across his face as he remembered how she had carefully picked her way down the rain-slick steps of the school as she joked and laughed with her group of little friends. Hank closed his eyes and thought about how that had been the best day of his life; he didn't ever think he'd forget that feeling of euphoria at seeing her beautiful face and shining smile --- a little spot of sunshine in the gray, watery world.

Hank brought the coffee cup all the way to his lips before he remembered that it was empty. Sighing, he lowered his arm and continued to stare out at the rainy street in front of him as he retreated back to his memories of the day he had seen Keiko. He chuckled as he remembered the look of panic in Yohji's eyes when he and Ran had finally stomped, chilled and soaking wet, into the kitchen over the flower shop. Ran had been sick as a dog, thanks to spending an entire day out in the cold rain, and the tall blonde had taken one look at the shaking, coughing redhead and snarled that he'd better get dried off and into bed if he didn't want the beating of his life. Hank had been intimidated by Yohji's anger, but he remembered that Ran had simply shrugged and muttered, as he shouldered his way past the blonde, _"Always looking out for me, aren't you?"_ He had said it in a mean, sarcastic tone, but Hank had been close enough to the redhead to see the shock and surprise in his eyes as the words had, almost involuntarily, slipped out of his mouth. Ran had covered by angrily shrugging off the hand that Yohji had placed on his shoulder, pushing the older man roughly into the wall near the stairs, and hastily retreating into the solitude of his room, but Hank knew that Ran had meant the words. The terror he had seen in the kid's eyes had told him as much.

Hank leaned forward and blew onto the window. His hot breath made a foggy patch, which he wiped away with his sleeve. He brought the cup back to his lips and then sighed irritably as he realized that it was still empty. "I thought I thought I'd finally found a place a place where I could belong; a place where I could stay. A place where I could be happy," he muttered.

He placed his arm against the window's cold glass and rested his head against it as he thought about how he had returned to Keiko's school every day, just to wait, hidden in the alley across the street, to catch a glimpse of the little girl at the end of the school day. It became part of his routine, and was the one part of the day that he looked forward to with all of his heart, until a few days ago, when Keiko hadn't appeared. He continued to go back, but there was no sign of the girl. Ran had checked for him, but the girl and his in-laws hadn't moved or changed schools. It was as if Keiko had dropped off the face of the earth, and Hank felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his world.

That was when his mysterious visitor had appeared. Two nights ago, Hank had heard a soft knock at his door. He had opened it to find a stranger standing there. The man, who was fairly tall, with long, reddish-orange hair held back from his face by a large, elastic band, had immediately invited himself into Hank's apartment. The stranger was nicely dressed in white slacks, a green jacket, and a printed shirt, and he had an easy smile, but something about his eyes made Hank nervous. They were hard and cold, and there was something chillingly cruel and predatory about the smile that played across his face, yet never quite made it all the way to his eyes. Hank shivered in the warm flower shop as he recalled how frightened he had been of the stranger.

_"Yours?"_ the man had asked, shoving a photograph into Hank's hand with a twisted smile and a cruel chuckle.

Hank could still remember how his heart had skipped a beat when he had looked down to see Keiko's face smiling at him from the picture he held. He had looked dumbly back at the man, unsure of what he should say or do.

_"We have her," _the man had said, a cruel, sinister smile crossing his mouth as he watched recognition and then fear cross Hank's face. The man had moved smoothly into the room to sit on the couch that Yohji had purchased. _"Nice couch," _he had commented as he sank into the thick upholstery. _"Yotan has such good taste."_

Hank could remember the shock he had felt at the strange man's easy use of Yohji's nickname. He had turned to face his unwelcome visitor and stammered, _"I I don't I don't believe you. I don't believe you have Keiko."_

The man had laughed, a hard, cruel sound, as he removed an object from his pocket and tossed it across the room. Hank had caught the small missile in mid-air, and when he had opened his palm, there was a small gold cross lying across it. With a shaking hand, he had turned it over to read the inscription on the back: _"Forever. 10-10-95"_. The object in his hand had erased all doubt from his mind. He had given the cross to Yuki on their wedding day, and, when his in-laws had taken Keiko from him, his last contact with the little girl had been to place it around her neck.

The man's voice had cut into Hank's thoughts then: _"You can get her back, but you'll have to give us something in return." In response to Hank's questioning look, the man had replied, "Information. Information on your little friend, Ran. We want to know where he goes and what he does; when he's alone --- at the store or outside of it; the security codes to the shop and apartment alarms and, any other information we might ask for later."_ The man had risen smoothly to stalk back across the room to the door. Before exiting the apartment, he had paused long enough to slip a small card containing just a phone number into Hank's hand. _"You can reach me there,"_ he had said, walking away without even a backward glance.

Hank slammed his fist into the window as he recalled the smug, confident tone in the man's voice. 'I I didn't want to betray you, Ran. I I just didn't have a choice,' he thought miserably as he remembered how he had finally given in and dialed the number the man had given him.

He had been spying on Ran for two days now, passing information to the stranger on a nightly basis, and he had never felt lower in his whole life. He glanced into the window to see his own face reflected there. "Traitor," he hissed under his breath through clenched teeth as he, once again, slammed his fist into the glass.

"Yohji's gonna kick your ass if you break that window," Aya said softly as he entered from the shop's back room.

Hank jumped at the sound of Aya's deep voice. He hadn't heard the younger man come into the room. Bubba's dog tags clinked together as the large animal trotted out from behind the counter to come to Hank's side and amiably snuffle his hand in greeting. Hank pasted a smile on his face as he turned around to face the man to whom he owed his life, the man he was now betraying, and said, "Ran! You're finally back, huh?" He glanced down at his watch in an attempt to hide the fact that he couldn't bring himself to look Aya in the eyes. "Wow! You were gone for a long time," he finally said.

Aya sighed and moved to sit on a stool behind the counter near the cash register. He leaned onto the counter, pillowing his head on his arms, looking every bit like an exhausted little boy, and mumbled, "I had to go to the principal's office."

Hank had begun to cross the floor toward Aya, but he stopped in mid-stride at the redhead's statement. At first, he thought that he hadn't heard correctly, and he asked, "I'm sorry?"

Aya looked up at him, raising his head slightly from the countertop, and repeated, "Yeah. I had to go to the principal's office, because Omi's missed so much school." He sighed again and said, "I had to have a lecture about how I'm ruining the kid's future. I hate the principal's office."

Hank tried to hold back, but the forlorn, serious look on Aya's face was just too much. He snickered, and then, finally, gave in to his urge to laugh out loud. He stood in the middle of the floor and laughed until he thought his sides were going to split open and tears streamed down his face. Aya just glared at him.

After a few minutes, Aya ran his hand through his hair and said, in a tired voice, "Screw this. We're not going to have any business today. No one's coming out in this rain, and I'm too tired to do this. There are four deliveries scheduled for today. I made the arrangements earlier, so could you deliver them for me? After that, you can go home, if you want. I'm closing up for the day."

"Um OK," Hank replied hesitantly. He paused for a few moments, watching Bubba snuffle into the corners of the shop. The dog ambled from one corner of the store to the other, nosing behind barrels of cut flowers and potted plants until he was finally rewarded with a loud crash when he pushed over a particularly large stack of flower buckets. As the dog playfully chased the water and flowers that spilled across the floor, Hank looked over to see Aya staring at the ceiling with a sort of "why me?" look on his face. The older man laughed softly, and, as he crossed the room to take the car keys Aya offered him, he said, "That's OK. I'll come back to clean up for you. Yohji won't be too happy with me if I make you clean up this mess on your own."

"Hnh," Aya replied. He had once again pillowed his head on his crossed arms, and his voice was muffled, sounding as if he was on the verge of sleep. "Yeah," he mumbled, "That asshole's too overprotective. And, I think he hates that dog." The words might have been harsh, but the tone was affectionate.

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	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 3**

The sound of enraged snarling and frenzied barking woke Yohji from a dreamless sleep. He rolled over with a groan and fumbled on the nightstand for his clock. When he finally succeeded in locating the errant timepiece, he pulled it off of the bedside table and held it close to his eyes, squinting at it in the grayed-out, semi-darkness of his room. The glowing, digital numbers seemed to slide into strange shapes for a few minutes before he finally managed to make his eyes focus on them adequately enough to read the time.

"2:30," he groaned under his breath as he threw the clock toward the nightstand. It missed, and fell to the floor with a loud cracking sound that heralded breaking plastic and a trip to the corner electronics store. He placed his hand over his eyes and squinted at the ceiling through the space between his fingers. 'It's not that dark. Must be in the P.M.,' he thought as he slowly willed his mind to get over the shock of being so abruptly and rudely awakened. He ran his fingers through his tangled hair and tried to figure out just how long he had been asleep. He could vaguely remember stumbling back into his room at around five that morning.

'Nine hours,' he thought slowly. 'Shit. Doesn't even feel like nine minutes. I'm getting too damn old for this shit.'

Yohji stretched, grimacing at the sound of his joints cracking, and absently wondered exactly what had awakened him. He shrugged and turned over onto his side, his back to the door, and was just about to drop back off to sleep when Bubba's angry, snarling bark once again worked its way into his subconscious. He sighed angrily as he rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed. As soon as his feet hit the floor, he thought, 'Damn I hate that dog.'

Yohji stumbled toward the door, pulling on a pair of black jeans as he traveled across the floor. He tripped over a pair of shoes, nearly falling flat on his face, and tossed the traitorous footwear behind him with a string of muttered curses. They hit the opposite wall with a loud thud just as he managed to yank open the door and stumble out into the hallway toward Aya's room. When he reached the redhead's open doorway, Yohji stood and stared for a minute as his sleep-muddled mind continued to fight to make sense out of things. Aya's room was empty, and it slowly occurred to Yohji that the barking was coming from downstairs.

He sighed irritably as he turned to make his way down the hall toward the stairs that would lead into the flower shop's back room. "Geez, Aya," he muttered angrily under his breath, "People are sleeping here, for crying out loud. Why the hell can't you get that damn dog to shut the fuck up?"

Yohji paused briefly as he passed Omi's door, which was slightly ajar. When he peered through the crack, he saw a rumpled shape on the bed. After a few seconds of squinting, he realized it was Omi. He pushed the door open a little further and stuck his head into the room, softly calling, "Kiddo? Hey, Kiddo. Everything OK?"

Omi rolled over to face the door with a soft groan and replied, "Yeah?" His voice was muffled and sounded hoarse and weak.

"I asked if everything was all right," Yohji repeated, entering the room to stand next to the boy's bed. He leaned over and placed a tentative hand against Omi's forehead. "Whoa," he said with a low whistle, "You've got one hell of a fever going there."

Omi swatted Yohji's hand away irritably as he said, "Yeah. I got sick at school, so Aya picked me up a few hours ago. I think I have the flu, so don't get too close, if you don't want to catch it."

Yohji grinned. "Don't worry. I never catch stuff like that. It must be my superior genes."

Omi chuckled, immediately regretting his action as the laugh disintegrated into a shuddering, hacking cough. "Yeah, right," he said in a soft, hoarse voice when he finally managed to catch his breath, "It's probably all the alcohol and cigarettes. I'm sure they kill off the germs." As Bubba unleashed another round of furious snarls, growls, and barks, he sighed irritably and mumbled, as he turned back toward the wall, "Get Aya to shut up that fucking dog."

"Yes, sir," Yohji muttered as he turned away and exited the room.

He traveled another short distance down the hall and paused in front of the door to Ken's room. He could hear the ex-goalie snoring loudly through the closed door. He shook his head and decided against opening the door to check on his teammate. "That idiot," he muttered under his breath as he approached the stairs, a slight smile playing across his lips, "Only Ken could sleep through all this damn noise." He rubbed irritably at his eyes and mumbled, "When I get my hands on Aya, I'm gonna beat the ever-living shit out of him for letting that dog wake me up. Then, I'm gonna get my wire and tie that fucking dog into a knot --- a little, black ball." The thought of Bubba tied up into a small, little black ball, as ludicrous as it was, finally broke through Yohji's sleepy veneer and caused him to laugh.

Yohji was still laughing as he made his descent. He paused briefly on the second floor, where he peered into the kitchen and living room, to make sure no one was in there before continuing on his way to the foot of the stairs. But, about halfway down, the sound died in his throat. The door at the bottom of the stairs was closed, effectively shutting the apartment off from the rest of the shop. Bubba was at the door, snarling and growling angrily. Every few seconds, the huge dog would throw himself against the door, causing it to creak slightly outward. Yohji could hear the wood groan under the animal's weight, but the door was old and solid, and it held fast. When he was unable to break through, Bubba resorted to chewing at the door with his teeth and raking it angrily with his claws. As Yohji came to the last stair, a few inches behind Bubba, he could see fresh score marks and gouges in the wood, made by the dog's teeth and nails, and the door and stairwell immediately surrounding Bubba were liberally covered with slobber.

The stair creaked under Yohji's weight, and Bubba whirled around at the noise to face his new enemy with an angry snarl. The dog's eyes, which were practically glowing with rage, were narrowed into angry, little slits, and he faced Yohji with teeth bared and a low, throaty growl. In the semi-darkness of the stairwell, all the tall blonde could clearly see of the dog were his glowing, yellow eyes and eerily white teeth. Yohji involuntarily took a step backward, and, for a moment, he thought about retreating back up the stairs to the relative safety of his room. But, just as suddenly as he had turned on him, Bubba turned his attention back to the door, as if he had completely forgotten Yohji was even there.

That did it for Yohji. The tall blonde felt the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and his danger sense kicked into high gear. For this particular dog, which seemed to hate all of them, to ignore him and act like this, something had to be horribly wrong, and, considering Bubba's frenzied state and single-minded devotion, that something had to be wrong with Aya. Yohji paused for another moment, silently cursing himself for not bringing his weapons downstairs with him. He closed his eyes and pictured the watches sitting on the dresser near his door, right where he had tossed them when he had stumbled into his room early this morning. He briefly thought about retreating back up the stairs to retrieve them, but a new, more frenzied round of barks and growls from Bubba, accompanied by the sound of the dog's massive body once again slamming into the closed door, jolted him away from that thought.

Yohji carefully pushed his way past Bubba and placed himself between the dog and the door. He silently prayed that the crazed animal wouldn't attack him, but the door opened into the stairwell. This was the only way he could put enough distance between it and the dog so that he could pull it open. He only had a brief glimpse into the room before Bubba rocketed past him, knocking him roughly to the stairs, but that split-second glance was enough to send chills up his spine and make his blood run cold.

The Koneko's back room was in shambles. Cut flowers, plants, broken pots, and various florists' tools were tossed around the room and onto the floor. The glass doors on the coolers near the doorway leading into the main retail area were shattered, and the plants within them spilled out onto the floor, as well. He could only see part of the store's front room through the open doorway, but, in that limited area of view, he could see more broken pots, flower buckets, cut flowers, dirt, and water spilling across the floor, and two more broken flower cooler doors. Despite the signs of a violent struggle, the rooms were strangely quiet. The only sounds were Bubba's angry growling, dripping water, and soft, crazed laughter. Just before the dog shoved its way past him, Yohji leaned slightly to one side, and caught a split-second glimpse of Shuldich standing in the store's front room. The German was in front of the large, plate-glass window. He was holding Aya by the throat, slightly off the ground, and he was laughing at the swordsman, who was still struggling weakly against his grip. Yohji couldn't believe what he was seeing. His mind knew he'd only been standing there for a couple of seconds, but he felt almost as if time was standing still, as if he was frozen to the spot and unable to race to Aya's aid.

Bubba was a black blur of legs, massively muscled body, and flashing, white teeth as he rocketed past Yohji with a vicious, angry snarl and a low, gravelly bark of rage. The dog clipped the backs of Yohji's legs, sending the tall blonde sprawling onto the stairs and effectively breaking the spell that seemed to have stopped time in the flower shop. Yohji couldn't believe that an animal as large as Bubba could move with such speed, but, by the time he had managed to pick himself up off the floor, the dog had already crossed the back and front rooms to launch himself directly at Aya's attacker with a loud, angry snarl.

Yohji stumbled toward the doorway. When he had almost reached the front room, he slipped in the water covering the floor and fell heavily to his knees. He pulled himself to his feet, using the door frame between the two rooms for support, and succeeded in righting himself just in time to see the frightened, shocked look on Schuldich's face as Bubba came hurtling toward him. Yohji allowed himself a small feeling of smug satisfaction as he regained his feet and tumbled the last couple of feet into the store's front room.

The tall blonde's feeling of satisfaction at seeing Schuldich bested by Aya's dog melted away within seconds. Bubba hit Schuldich almost square in the back and immediately sank his teeth into the German's shoulder. Schuldich howled in anger and pain. He twisted slightly and punched at the dog with his free hand, but he never relinquished his choke-hold on Aya. The redhead had stopped struggling, and he hung limply in Schuldich's grasp, although his hand still weakly gripped the German's wrist. Bubba was like an eighty pound missile, and the impact knocked Schuldich off balance. The German seemed to struggle briefly to stay upright, but Bubba's momentum sent him, along with Aya, tumbling through the shop's plate-glass window.

"AYA!" Yohji screamed as he leaped across the last few feet of empty space separating him from the other two men.

Yohji reached them just as Aya, Schuldich, and Bubba hit the window, shattering it. He shielded his eyes from flying shards of glass with one hand and grabbed for Aya with the other, in a vain attempt to keep the redhead from falling through the window. He felt Aya's wrist slip through his fingers as the weight of his attacker and the dog carried him through the glass, and he was close enough to see the look of pain and panic that crossed the redhead's face as the three struggling bodies tumbled out of the flower shop and into the cold rain that had been drenching the city for most of the day.

Aya took the brunt of the impact with the window, as well as being the first to land on the cold, wet, glass-littered sidewalk. As he jumped through the now-empty window frame after them, carefully avoiding the glass littering the ground, Yohji saw Aya land heavily on the concrete, with Schuldich's and Bubba's full weight on top of him. The landing was enough to break the German's grip on Aya's throat. Yohji saw the redhead struggle for air after the initial impact, which knocked the wind out of him. After a couple of seconds that seemed like an eternity to the tall blonde, Aya took a deep, gasping breath, coughing weakly, as he lay, stunned, on the sidewalk in the pouring rain.

Yohji, who had jumped through the window only seconds after the others, was on top of Schuldich almost immediately. As always, though, the German's reflexes were sharp, and he recovered from the dog's attack and the tumble through the window with lightening-quick speed. Cursing in German, Schuldich brought his fist down, hard, on Bubba's snout and, somehow, managed to break the dog's death grip on his shoulder. With another string of unintelligible curses and a snarl of anger and rage that would have made even Bubba proud, the German kicked the dog off of him and catapulted the animal into Yohji, sending the tall blonde tumbling heavily onto the wet, glass-littered concrete. Schuldich rolled quickly off of Aya as Yohji struggled to untangle himself from the angry, snarling dog without getting bitten.

Aya, who was still badly stunned from flying through the window and the impact with the sidewalk, started to struggle to a standing position, as if in an attempt to defend himself. Almost as soon as he had rolled off of the redhead, Schuldich grabbed the front of Aya's shirt and pulled him up off of the ground. Aya was too badly shaken to muster anything more than a token resistance, and his legs seemed to refuse to support his weight. Schuldich cast a smug, hateful glance back toward Yohji as, with a smile, he threw Aya into the street, directly into the path of an approaching car. The German spared one last, mocking glance over his shoulder as he turned to run away from the shop.

At almost the same instant, Bubba and Yohji finally succeeded in untangling themselves. Bubba launched after Schuldich, using Yohji's chest as a springboard. The tall blonde winced as the dog's nails dug deep gouges into his bare chest and torso. Without pausing to think, Yohji jumped toward the street and Aya. He felt like he was struggling through sludge. It was as if he was watching a slow-motion movie, and he could almost see the car bearing down on Aya, frame by painful frame. Yohji felt like he had lived three lifetimes during the seconds it took for him to reach his teammate. Just as the car, which didn't have time to even attempt a stop, reached Aya, Yohji managed to grab the redhead's arm and jerk him roughly back onto the sidewalk. The tall blonde could feel the wind from the car's tires on his face, and the screaming screech of its brakes reverberated off his eardrums as he landed on his back on the wet concrete with Aya cradled against his chest.

The impact took Yohji's breath away, and he lay on the sidewalk, gasping for air and shivering from the cold and the rain that seemed to seep right through his bare skin to settle in his bones. When he felt Aya start to struggle away from him, he sat up and gently pushed the redhead away, into a sitting position, but as Aya began to struggle to his feet, he gently gripped the younger man's wrist to hold him in place.

"Stop it, Aya!" Yohji panted. "Where where are you going?"

Aya continued to try to shake off Yohji's restraining hand, and he turned to glare at the older man. At least, Yohji thought he was attempting a glare at him, but the best Aya could muster, under the circumstances, was a vacant, lost look that made the tall blonde cringe.

"A after them," Aya finally panted once he managed to catch his breath. "I I have to get have to get Bubba." He made another attempt to get to his feet, and failed miserably.

"No way," Yohji said, his voice hard and flat. He immediately regretted his tone when Aya winced and tried to shy away from him. "Sorry," he continued in a softer voice. "But, you're not in any condition to go anywhere. You can't even stand up! Come on," he said, standing and pulling Aya up after him. "Let's get inside." When Aya continued to try to struggle away from him, Yohji shook the younger man hard enough to almost make Aya fall back to the ground. He felt the redhead's legs give way, and quickly tightened his grip on Aya's shirt to keep him from falling as he hissed through clenched teeth, "Just come inside. I'll send Ken after the dog."

That seemed to satisfy Aya, and the redhead allowed Yohji to half-lead and half-carry him back into the flower shop. The tall blonde ignored the door, scrambling though the broken window, instead, and pulled Aya in after him. Yohji glanced around the wrecked store and spotted a dry spot on the floor near the counter. He helped Aya to it and gently deposited the redhead there. Aya leaned back against the counter to slide heavily to a sitting position, and Yohji frowned at the dark red streaks left on the counter's base after his slow descent to the floor. Once he was satisfied that Aya wasn't going anywhere, Yohji crossed through the shop to stand at the foot of the stairs leading to their apartment. He had to be careful of the water and glass on the floor, and almost fell twice before he reached his destination.

"KEN! OMI!" he yelled up into the dark stairwell, as he frowned and shook glass shards out of his hair, "GET YOUR ASSES DOWN HERE NOW!" Within seconds, he was rewarded with the sound of heavy steps pounding down the hallway at a run, and he turned back toward the front room, calling out, "Watch your step! There's water and broken glass everywhere down here!"

Yohji knelt down next to Aya. Now that the initial adrenaline surge had left him, the younger man had begun to shiver violently from the cold. The redhead was sitting just as he had left him, and didn't seem to notice the blood that stained the counter and his clothes. Aya was drenched. Water dripped from his hair and face, mixing with the blood to run off of his body and puddle around him. He was staring at the floor directly in front of him with vacant, unfocused, slightly glazed eyes, and he didn't seem to feel any of the pain from his injuries. The tall blonde frowned and cupped his hand under Aya's chin, tilting the redhead's face upward so that he could look into the empty, bluish-violet eyes. "Hey," he called softly, "You in there?"

Aya jerked his face out of Yohji's grip and shook his head slightly, as if to clear his mind. "Yeah," he replied, his voice shaking and so soft that Yohji had to lean forward to hear it, even though he was only inches away.

"OK," Yohji replied. "Look, I think you messed up your back pretty bad when you went through the window. Your shirt's trashed, and you're bleeding all over the damn place here. I need to check, OK?"

When Aya nodded, Yohji unbuttoned the tattered remnants of the redhead's shirt, allowing it to slide gently off of his shoulders and onto the floor behind him. He gripped the younger man's shoulder and leaned him forward so that he could get a good look at Aya's back, wincing when he finally saw that it was a mass of deep cuts, shallow scratches, and embedded shards of glass. There were a few gouges along the redhead's sides that were deep enough to allow the blonde a view of Aya's ribs.

"What the hell?" Ken's voice yanked Yohji's attention away from Aya's injuries.

The ex-goalie stood in the doorway separating the shop's back and front rooms. Yohji glared at the new arrival and made a mental note of just how much he hated Ken when he noticed that the brunette hadn't forgotten his weapons. The ex-goalie was just clicking the steel claws back into his gloves when Yohji looked up at him. Yohji could see Omi's pale, worried face peeking over Ken's shoulder, and the tall blonde mentally decided that he hated the kid, too, when he caught the vaguest glimpse of Omi's crossbow as the boy leaned around Ken to look into the front room.

"What the hell happened?" Ken repeated, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His eyes held the crazy, excited gleam that they seemed to take on whenever he was about to leap into action. When he didn't get any response from his teammates, Ken continued, "This place looks like a freaking typhoon hit it. Have you guys been fighting?"

"Don't be stupid," Omi snapped as he shoved Ken out of the way and darted into the shop's front room to kneel next to Yohji and Aya. He gave Yohji a worried look and asked, "Is is he OK?" He reached out a shaking hand to brush at the bluish-purple bruises that were already discoloring Aya's throat, as if he could wipe them away. "Those look like fingers," he said, softly, never taking his eyes from Aya's face.

"Yeah," Yohji finally replied. He finished his initial inspection of Aya's injuries and turned to his other two teammates. "Schuldich," he said, by way of explanation, spitting the word out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. "I heard Bubba barking bloody murder and came down to find him trying to break through the door at the bottom of the stairs. When I opened it, I found Schuldich in here trying to choke Aya. Bubba attacked him and they all fell through the front window." He clenched his fists tightly as he pictured the panicked look that had been on Aya's face as he had fallen through the window, and the silent plea for help he had seen in the younger man's eyes, as he had fallen into the street in front of that oncoming car, and he could feel his whole body trembling with barely suppressed rage. He knew his voice was shaking with the emotion, but he couldn't stop it.

"How how did he get in?" Omi asked, finally turning wide, surprised, blue eyes toward Yohji.

Yohji shrugged. "I don't know, and Aya isn't exactly sharing right now. Frankly, at this moment, I don't even give a shit." He sighed and looked away from Aya to meet Omi's eyes, and his voice softened at the frightened look he saw there. "Look, some of these are pretty bad. We need to get him to the ER. Omi, get a blanket, OK?"

Omi nodded and scurried off into the recesses of the shop, slipping and sliding around on the wet floor as he ran for the stairs. Within seconds, Yohji could hear the boy's feet pounding out a rhythm overhead, and, within another few minutes, Omi returned. He skidded to a stop, falling to his knees next to Yohji, and gave the older man an encouraging smile as he pulled a warm, heavy blanket around Aya's shoulders.

"Here," Omi said. He held a long-sleeved shirt out to Yohji. "Thought you might be cold, too. You're bleeding, too, Yohji."

"It's all right. My cuts aren't that bad. Thanks for the shirt," Yohji replied as he shrugged into it. He wouldn't have ever admitted it, but he had been cold, and he was grateful for Omi's thoughtfulness. He smiled his thanks at the boy and stood, gently pulling Aya up after him. Yohji frowned when the redhead leaned heavily against him without protesting.

"OK," Yohji said. He was still shaking with anger, but he could feel Aya trembling against his side, and he struggled to keep his voice soft, calm, and gentle in an effort to give his injured friend some reassurance. "I'm going to take him to the hospital. Omi, don't worry about cleaning up down here, but lock down the metal doors to cover the broken window, and then reset the security code just in case."

"Should I should I call Manx?" Omi asked hesitantly.

"No," Yohji replied, "We don't really know what the hell's going on here. I don't want to involve her until we have a better idea of what happened." He turned his attention briefly toward Ken, who still stood uncertainly in the doorway. "Ken, go after that damn dog. Aya's worried about him."

"OK," Ken mumbled as he moved to exit the shop. He looked distinctly uncomfortable about his assignment, but, given the circumstances, he knew better than to argue about it. As he passed near Yohji and Aya, he muttered, almost under his breath, "All things considered, if Bubba's chasing him, you really should worry about Schuldich."

Yohji was relieved to hear Aya respond to Ken's statement with a small chuckle.

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	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER 4**

Yohji squirmed around on the hard, uncomfortable chair as he vainly tried to shift into a position that would allow him to remain seated without actually making his ass go completely numb. He finally realized that his quest was futile, and stood to pace up and down the short hallway leading from the emergency room waiting area to the treatment rooms. He paused at the double doors separating the two spaces and leaned his head against the glass pane inset in one of the doors. He knew Aya was safe, in one of the rooms just beyond, but he would have preferred to stay with his injured teammate. He told himself that he was being overprotective and irrational, but he knew he wouldn't be happy until he had Aya in sight again. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see Aya falling through the shop's window amid a shower of glittering glass, Aya sailing into the street directly in front of that car, and the smug, satisfied grin on Schuldich's face as the German pushed Aya into the street. Yohji could feel anger overwhelming him again, and he turned away from the doors to slam his fist into the wall. The noise drew the attention of the nurses working the ER desk, and they glanced at Yohji disapprovingly. The tall blonde tried to give them one of his patented, playboy smiles --- the kind that typically had women fawning and swooning all over him, but he knew he failed miserably. The day's events had shaken him up so much that he couldn't even concentrate on charming women --- just one more reason to hate that German fucker.

"What a shitty, shitty day," Yohji muttered, turning away from the double doors and nurses' desk to resume his pacing. He absently patted at the front of his shirt, looking for his package of cigarettes, and cursed when he realized he didn't have them. He leaned against a wall, rubbing his hands irritably through his hair. He had gone off without a hair tie, and the long, blonde locks fell in an untidy mess about his shoulders and in his face.

"Shit," he muttered, "I could really use a smoke right about now." He glanced up at the huge sign just across from where he was standing, which said "NO SMOKING" in angry, red letters that seemed to point accusing fingers right at him. "Not that they'd let me smoke, anyhow," Yohji sighed under his breath. He looked back down at the floor and stared absently at his bare feet, which, he just realized, were ice cold. He'd been in such a hurry to get Aya to the hospital that he hadn't even bothered to put on his shoes. "If I can't smoke and I don't have a fucking hair tie, then, at least, shoes would be nice," he muttered irritably as he started pacing again.

"You're gonna wear a hole in that damn floor."

Yohji jumped at the sound of his friend's voice. He turned toward the nurses' desk to see Aya leaning against it. The redhead looked pale and tired, and Yohji could see his hands shaking as he tried to fill out the forms the nurses shoved in front of him. Yohji crossed the room in five long strides to stand next to his friend. He leaned against the desk, resting his weight on his elbows, in what he hoped was a fairly nonchalant, unworried pose, and looked up at Aya, giving the swordsman a crooked grin. Aya glared back at him, as best he could, considering that his eyes seemed unwilling to focus, and then turned back toward the forms. He sighed irritably and squinted at the papers in front of him, as if he could will his eyes to work properly and his hands to stop shaking.

"Here," Yohji said, gently bumping Aya companionably with his hip, "let me do it, OK? We'll be here all year if we wait for you."

He grabbed the pen out of Aya's hand and quickly started filling in made up answers to the questions on the form. They hadn't gone to one of Kritiker's "underground" hospitals because he hadn't wanted to involve Manx until they knew exactly what was going on, but they couldn't have any of Aya's actual information in the hospital's files, considering their little "nighttime" occupations.

"Thanks," Aya mumbled, almost under his breath. He leaned slightly against Yohji and rested his crossed arms on the desk, leaning over to pillow his head on them with a barely-audible groan.

"Um, excuse me," a voice broke in, causing Yohji to turn around and look behind them. "Are you are you the person who brought Mr. Smith in?"

Yohji glared at the man standing there. The stranger, who looked as if he was in his mid-thirties, was short, balding, and a little on the chubby side. He was wearing scrubs, tennis shoes, a long white coat, and glasses, which he pulled off and nervously twirled in his hand as Yohji stared at him. When Yohji didn't reply right away, the little man started to nervously shift his weight from one foot to the other. He either looked like he was performing a nervous little dance, or he had to go to the bathroom. Yohji couldn't quite decide which.

Finally, when he couldn't stand to watch the little man's nervous jig any longer, Yohji cleared his throat, and said, "I'm sorry. I think you have the wrong "

"That's me," Aya said softly. "Stan Smith."

Yohji looked from the little man, who was still jigging back and forth in front of him and blinking at him expectantly, to Aya. The redhead hadn't even bothered to turn around to look at the new arrival. He remained leaning against the desk, his head still pillowed on his crossed arms, as if the man wasn't even worthy of his attention. Yohji directed his attention back to the little man, who was still jigging from one foot to the other, blinking, and twirling his glasses in one hand. He looked like one big, walking nervous tic, and Yohji had to suppress the urge to giggle.

When he had managed to gain control of himself, the blonde said, "Yeah, um, that's me. I'm the one who brought him in." He jerked his thumb to the side to indicate Aya, "Yeah him Stan Stan Smith."

When the man didn't say anything else, Yohji turned away from him and back toward the desk and the stack of forms awaiting his attention. He frowned at the form on top of the pile, crossed out the information he'd written in response to the question asking for "Patient's Name", and replaced it with "Stan Smith". Then, he leaned forward and plucked at the nearest nurse's sleeve to get her attention. "Excuse me, Miss," he asked, "Could I possibly get back those forms I already turned in to you?"

The nurse frowned at him, but she turned to shuffle through a few stacks of papers in order to retrieve the forms. Yohji leaned over toward Aya and asked, in a soft, teasing voice, "So, you get a lot of stitches **Stan**? I mean, I really, really had to wait out here for a long time **Stan**. I was pretty worried about you **Stan**."

Aya sighed, a small sound of irritation and resignation that brought a slight smile to Yohji's lips. He was worried about his friend, but the fact that he was able to irritate Aya so easily indicated that the redhead was probably going to be all right. Finally, Aya attempted another glare at Yohji and said in a tired, flat voice, "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Why, yes. Yes, I am **Stan**," Yohji replied, laughing softly. A small sound caused him to once again turn around to look behind him, and he saw that the little man was still there --- jigging, blinking, and twirling. Yohji asked, with no small hint of irritation, "You still there?"

"Um yes," the man replied. "I'm um, Dr. Tanaka," he said, bowing slightly. "I uh treated Mr. Smith." Dr. Tanaka cleared his throat and glanced at Aya nervously. "I was wondering um, are you Mr. Smith's relative?"

"Well, uh no," Yohji stammered, "I'm uh "

"He's my brother," Aya broke in, cutting Yohji off in mid-sentence.

"I see," Dr. Tanaka said. He had managed to stop stammering, but he still twirled his glasses in his free hand, and he glanced nervously at Aya every few seconds. "I was wondering if you could, um maybe talk some sense into your brother. His injuries aren't life-threatening, but they are pretty serious, and he lost a lot of blood. He really should stay, at least overnight so that "

"I already said no," Aya broke in again. He finally turned around to face the doctor. He leaned back slightly against the counter for support, a casual show of false bravado that cost him, and he grimaced in pain. He glared at Dr. Tanaka, and said, in a hard, cold voice, "That's final. Go away."

"Yes, but," Dr. Tanaka began.

"Go. Away." Aya snapped, his patience finally breaking.

The redhead glared at the doctor until Tanaka finally shrugged and turned to walk away. Just before leaving them, he shoved a piece of paper into Yohji's hand, commenting, "Pain medication. He's going to need it, so be sure to get it filled."

Yohji turned back to the desk and started filling out the last form, unable to suppress his laughter any longer. He shook his head, chuckling softly, as he said, "Geez, Aya. Oh, I mean **Stan** you scared that poor guy half to death." When he felt Aya suddenly lean heavily against him, Yohji glanced quickly toward his friend. "Hey, you OK?" he asked, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

Aya nodded weakly and replied, in an absent, sleepy tone, "Just fill out the damn forms. I really feel like shit. If I pass out here, they'll never let me leave."

*******************************************************

Aya managed to make it out of the hospital and to the parking lot under his own steam, but his strength abandoned him once they reached Yohji's car. He sagged heavily against the vehicle, swaying from side to side, as he waited for Yohji to unlock it, and the tall blonde had to use one hand to keep Aya from sliding down to the ground. He fumbled clumsily with the lock and glanced worriedly over at his friend. Aya almost seemed unaware of where he was. The confused, vacant look that Yohji had noticed in his eyes earlier seemed to have intensified, and the redhead stared absently at the ground near his feet.

"Hey," Yohji called. When Aya didn't respond, he gently shook the younger man to draw his attention away from the ground, "You OK? You want to go back inside?"

"Nnh," Aya replied. His words were slurred, and Yohji could tell he was having a hard time putting a sentence together. Finally, Aya weakly waved his hand in front of his face, as if that action would clear the cobwebs from his mind, and said, "Painkillers."

"Oh," Yohji replied.

He finally succeeded in opening the passenger side door, and then helped Aya into the seat. When Aya fumbled unsuccessfully with the seatbelt, Yohji sighed and said, in a tone of mock irritation, "Here, let me do it. We don't have all day." He leaned over and buckled the belt with a click. Before going around to his side of the car, Yohji retrieved his extra coat from the back seat and draped it over his friend. On an impulse, he ruffled Aya's hair and laughed softly when the younger man hissed in irritation and swatted at his hand.

They drove in silence for a while, until Yohji couldn't stand it any longer. Aya was almost eerily still and quiet, and the older man didn't like it. He glanced over to the passenger side of the car. Aya was slumped down in the seat, leaning heavily against the door, and he looked small, vulnerable, and fragile. Yohji felt like he had been punched in the stomach. He knew there was no such thing as a superman, but he had always thought of Aya as the closest thing to it. The redhead seemed like an assassin's assassin --- always cold, always in control, always strong, able to cut a wide, bloody swath through anything and everything his enemies might throw at him, and in possession of an uncanny ability to get in and out of the tightest scrapes. He had seen the swordsman overcome so many obstacles, fight and defeat so many unbeatable enemies, recover from so many injuries, and perform the most impossible tasks in a way that made the extraordinary seem mundane so many times that he had, without even realizing it, come to think of Aya as something greater than human. He couldn't stand seeing the redhead like this. Yohji suddenly decided that he needed to hear Aya's voice, just so that he would know the other man was all right.

"Hey," he called, "So, how many stitches you get, anyhow?"

Aya didn't reply for a long time, and Yohji had just started to think that the younger man had drifted off to sleep when he heard the swordsman say, in a soft, weak, slightly slurred voice, "Dunno. A lot, I guess. Stopped counting at, like, ninety."

Yohji whistled softly. He hadn't guessed that Aya's injuries were that bad. "Well," he said, taking his eyes from the rain-slick road long enough to look over at his companion, "Guess you're gonna have a whole lot of new scars, huh?"

Aya opened one eye into a little slit to glance over at Yohji. "You sound jealous," he commented.

Yohji shrugged. "Chicks dig scars," he said, smiling.

Aya laughed and mumbled, "Lucky me. If I live through Weiss, I'll get all the women I want."

After driving in silence for a few more minutes, Yohji took a deep breath as he worked up the courage to ask, "Aya? You told the doctor I was your brother. Why?"

He didn't really expect an answer. Aya never was one to admit to his feelings, let alone discuss them openly with another person. Most of the time, they were lucky if Aya even spoke to them or gave them more than one-word answers to their questions. He could remember lots of times when Aya went for days without speaking to anyone. Consequently, he was surprised to hear his friend reply, "I don't know. It it just sort of slipped out."

"Do you think of me that way?" Yohji persisted.

Aya paused for a long time before hesitantly saying, "Maybe well, yeah, I guess I mean, sort of." He sighed in frustration as he groped through his drug-fuzzed brain to find the words he needed to express himself. Finally, he continued, "I never had a brother. It was always just me and Aya. After she got hurt well, then, it was just me. But, I guess if I ever did have a brother, it'd be good I mean it'd be OK you know, if he was like you. If if it's not OK with you, though, I "

"No," Yohji said, cutting Aya off.

He glanced over at his friend. Aya's eyes were closed, but the blonde could see the blush discoloring the redhead's face. He knew how hard it had been for Aya to say those things. Yohji didn't know why, but it meant a lot to him. During the time he had spent watching over Aya after that last mission, he had realized that, somewhere along the line during their association, he had come to think of the redhead as a little brother, but he hadn't known that Aya felt the same way.

"No," he repeated, "It's OK. I guess you're pretty much like the dysfunctional, homicidal, delinquent little brother that I never had, so it's OK with me."

He glanced over at his friend again, and was glad to see a ghost of a smile playing across Aya's lips. Yohji turned his attention back to the road in front of them, and drove in silence for a while before asking, "Aya, how did Schuldich get in?"

When he didn't receive any response, Yohji looked over toward the passenger side of the car to discover that Aya had fallen asleep. He'd just have to wait until the redhead woke up to get the answers he needed.

*******************************************************

Yohji remained lost in his own thoughts for the rest of the ride home, which made the trip seem a lot longer than it was. The blonde mulled over how Schuldich could have gotten into the shop. No matter how many times he thought it through, he continued to come to the same inescapable, yet unhappy, conclusion. When he had gone downstairs in response to Bubba's barking, the shop had been dark, as if it was closed. If the store had been open and he had walked through the front door like a normal customer, Schuldich would never have been able to get the drop on Aya like he had, even if the redhead wasn't operating up to his normal standards. The only conclusion he could reach about the German's presence was that he had to have either been there waiting when Aya returned from picking Omi up, or he must have come in through the back door leading into the apartment over the store. Yohji had called Omi from the emergency room to ask if it looked like the security system had been tampered with, and the boy had responded that there were no signs Schuldich had broken in. That could only mean that the German had either acquired the security code, which only the four of them and Hank knew, or someone had let him into the shop. Not even Manx, Persia, or anyone else in Kritiker knew the security code to the shop and apartment. Aya had always insisted that the four of them needed to be able to feel safe when they were at home, and, because of that, he had refused to give any of the apartment codes to anyone else in the organization. Yohji knew it had been a sore point with Manx and Persia for quite some time, but Aya had refused to give in to their demands.

Yohji glanced uneasily at his sleeping friend, as he thought, 'Son of a bitch. It has to be Hank. He must have given Schuldich the code, or let him into the shop. But why? Is he Schwartz?'

If Hank was a spy, he had to admit that Schwartz had done a damn good job placing the man with them. It seemed to him that it had taken forever for the rest of the team to get Aya to accept and trust them. It was really only within the last couple of months that the quiet redhead had really started to open up to them, even though they lived together, worked together, and killed together. They all knew that Aya trusted them with his life; otherwise, Weiss wouldn't be the successful team that it was. Despite that, the redhead never seemed to trust them on a personal level - with his friendship or feelings. Aya didn't trust anyone with those things; he held them close and guarded them savagely. From the beginning, though, things had been different with Hank. Aya had seemed to trust the man implicitly, practically from their first meeting. Not only had the redhead openly accepted Hank and invited him into their lives, but he had, almost immediately, formed an easy friendship with the man. Perhaps the most obvious sign of that was that Aya had even allowed Hank to call him by his real name, a privilege that hadn't yet been given to any of his teammates. A privilege, which Yohji would have to admit, if he thought about it, still stung.

Yohji stared at his hands, which were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white, and his fingers were beginning to ache. At the next stop light, he took advantage of the little break to pry his fingers from around the wheel and shake some feeling back into them. The thought that Hank could be Schwartz scared the shit out of the tall blonde. The man had become like a member of their family so quickly and easily. If he was a spy, Schwartz was so far ahead of the game in intelligence gathering that the four of them might as well pack it in now, because it would only be a matter of time before the black assassins were dancing on all their graves. No, no matter how many ways he looked at it, he just couldn't imagine that Hank was Schwartz. They were all better judges of character than that, and they had all followed Aya's lead and openly trusted the man. More importantly, Aya trusted Hank. Even if the rest of the team had been wrong about the man, Aya was the most infallible judge of character that Yohji knew. The redhead was never wrong about people.

By the time he pulled into the parking area in the alley behind the flower shop, Yohji had convinced himself that Hank was definitely not a Schwartz spy. But, the alternative --- that Aya had finally rediscovered his humanity only to be betrayed --- was even worse. As Yohji turned off the car and glanced over at the sleeping redhead, he could barely contain the feeling of protective anger that washed over him.

'I hope I'm wrong,' Yohji thought as he debated over whether or not he should try to wake up Aya.

Even as the thought slid out of his mind, he knew he wasn't wrong about Hank. He knew, with that unerring, fatalistic certainty he'd always had in such situations, that Hank had been the one who had given Schuldich entry into their home. Finally, Yohji decided that it'd be pointless to try to wake Aya, and, as he went around to the passenger side to haul the redhead out of the car, he thought, 'I just hope he has a damn good reason for what he did, so I don't have to kill him for it.'

"Hey!" Omi called. He waited while Yohji carried Aya up the flight of outside stairs that would allow them entry into the kitchen, and held the door open, moving aside slightly so that Yohji could shoulder his way in without bumping Aya's body on the doorjamb. "How is he?" the boy asked, peering around Yohji's shoulder to glance at their unconscious teammate.

"Damn heavy," Yohji answered. "If I have to keep hauling his drugged-out ass around, I'm putting him on a diet!"

He moved past Omi to head toward the stairs leading up to their bedrooms. He had to walk sideways to avoid banging Aya's head and feet on the walls, and, by the time he had reached their rooms at the top of the stairs, he was huffing, out of breath, and actually considering quitting smoking, although he quickly dismissed that thought as nothing more than a foolish notion. Omi, who had trailed behind them, moved around him to open the door to Aya's room, but Yohji shook his head and nodded toward his own room, a little farther down the hall.

"No way. We're putting him in my room. If I have to sit up all night and watch his sorry ass sleep, I should at least have a comfortable chair," Yohji growled as he entered his room and tossed Aya gently onto the bed.

While Yohji busied himself with pulling off Aya's boots and settling the redhead comfortably on the bed, Omi darted out of the room. The boy returned a few moments later with the soft, down comforter from Aya's room. He smiled and stifled a sneeze as he handed it to Yohji, who tucked it around Aya's still form. With that task done, the blonde turned and regarded the youngest Weiss assassin with a coldly appraising eye.

"You look like shit, Omi," Yohji said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Omi started to laugh in response to Yohji's statement, but he ended up doubling over and grabbing his ribs when the laugh dissolved into a choking, hacking cough. The boy sniffled miserably and wiped at his runny nose with the back of his hand. Yohji couldn't help noticing, for the second time that day, that the kid looked like something the proverbial cat had dragged in --- or, maybe, like something Bubba had spent an entire afternoon playing with. The younger blonde was shaking, pale, and sweating, and Yohji could tell he was still running a fever. Still, the kid managed to smile at the up-raised eyebrow and skeptical look Yohji gave him.

"Yeah," Omi replied, once again wiping his nose on the back of his hand. He sat down on the floor, leaning back against the bed, and asked, in a serious voice, "Any ideas how Schuldich got in? I don't think the security system was breached. Maybe he walked in off the street --- you know, like a "normal" customer?"

Yohji pulled his overstuffed armchair next to the bed and sank into it. He sighed and rubbed his temples as he replied, "No. I don't think so. He managed to get the jump on Aya. That's not easy to do. Was the store open when you got home?"

Omi thought for a moment, and then slowly shook his head as he said, "No I'm sure it wasn't. I was pretty out of it, but I'm positive Aya said he'd closed up for the day. He hasn't been feeling all that great you know, since that last mission. Earlier this morning, he said he was going to work the shop today with Hank, so that you and Ken could sleep in, but I think he'd changed his mind."

Yohji leaned forward, elbows on knees, to rest his chin in the palms of his hands. He never took his eyes off the bed as he spoke, but Omi could hear the cold, hard edge to his voice. "Was Hank anyone here when you got back?"

Omi pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his head against them, muffling his voice when he replied, "No I I don't think so. No, I'm sure I'm sure there wasn't anyone here. The apartment and shop were both dark. I went upstairs right away. I thought Aya was coming up right behind me, but he told me to go upstairs, that he heard a noise, and " Omi's voice faltered and fell silent as he realized what had happened. He looked up at Yohji with wide, suddenly serious eyes, "Oh he was Schuldich was"

"Yeah," Yohji said, cutting Omi's statement off before the boy could finish. "I think he was already here, waiting for Aya, and I think Aya knew. But, he didn't want to get you or any of us involved."

"But, then that means he had to have gotten the security code somehow, or someone let him in, right?"

Yohji nodded. "I think I know what happened, but I don't like it. I don't like what I'm thinking, and I don't want to jump to any conclusions until Aya is awake enough to tell us what happened. My guess is that he has a pretty good idea how Schuldich got inside without getting eaten by that damn dog."

"That's right!" Omi exclaimed. "Bubba was up here. I found him locked inside Aya's room when I got up here. I heard him growling and scratching at the door, so I let him out, but then I just went right to bed. But, the only way Bubba could have gotten locked in up here, without Aya doing it is if"

Yohji waved his hand through the air in front of his face, bringing Omi's statement to a stop. "Just leave it, Omi. For now." He stood up and scratched his head. "Look, you already re-set the security code, right? So, you should just go back to bed. You're already sick."

"I'm fine," Omi replied, shaking his head. Yohji might have believed him, if the boy's words hadn't been drowned out by a coughing fit. Once he had managed to regain his breath, he continued, "Someone needs to stay with Aya, and everything downstairs is a mess. I'm going to go down and start cleaning up."

Yohji shook his head. He leaned down and lifted a corner of the down comforter. "At least get in here, then. That way, you'll be in bed, and someone will be with Aya." He glanced down at the unconscious redhead and shook his head, "He's so strung out right now, he'll never know, anyhow. We'll be lucky if he wakes up by this time tomorrow. I'll go down and start cleaning up. Aya'd be furious if I let you clean in your condition."

Omi started to protest, but he suddenly decided that he was just too tired and felt too icky to even argue. Wordlessly, he crawled under the comforter and settled himself gently, back-to-back with redhead. Aya grunted softly, but he scooted over to make more room for the boy.

Yohji smiled and, as he pulled the comforter over his teammates, he asked, "Ken come back yet with that stupid dog?"

Omi shook his head and mumbled, "No. He called earlier and said he was going to get Hank to help him look. He didn't think Bubba would come to him, anyhow."

"All right," Yohji replied. "Get some sleep."

****


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER 5**

On his way downstairs, Yohji ducked into the bathroom long enough to grab an elastic tie for his hair. When he clicked on the overhead light, he caught a brief glimpse of his own image in the mirror above the sink, and he couldn't help but stop and stare. Yohji had always prided himself on his appearance, and, now, he didn't recognize the man staring back at him. Uncombed, slightly greasy hair, pale, ashy-looking skin, gaunt, sunken-in cheeks, and hollow, exhausted eyes almost made him think that there was a stranger living in the bathroom mirror. He hadn't realized it, but he had pretty much run himself ragged in the past few weeks, keeping Aya under wraps and making sure that Weiss ran on its normal schedule without getting the redhead involved. He hadn't minded; he still didn't mind. All he wanted was to make sure that Aya made a full recovery, but, now that he really stopped to think about it, he couldn't remember the last time he had felt this exhausted. He knew that Omi and Ken were both just as tired. Weiss was definitely a four-man team. It wasn't possible to carry out their missions one man short, not considering the kind of assignments Kritiker normally dished out. It was probably why Omi had gotten sick, and it was likely only a matter of time before the same thing happened to Ken, too. Yohji wasn't worried about getting sick himself. As he had told Omi earlier that day, he never caught anything. He liked to attribute it to his superior genetic makeup, but, if the truth was known, it probably really was because of all the cigarettes he smoked and the alcohol he drank on an almost daily basis, just like Omi had said. Yohji ran his hands over his face in an effort to wipe away the tiredness and scrunched his mouth up into a frown. He hated it when the kid was right, and Omi was right almost all the time, damn him.

Yohji ran cold water into his hands and splashed it onto his face, almost as if he could wash away the worried, haunted look and dark circles that seemed to have taken up perpetual residence in and around his eyes. He dug through the medicine cabinet until he found a comb, which he held under the running tap for a few seconds before pulling it hurriedly through his hair. With that done, he grabbed the elastic tie that had drawn him into the bathroom in the first place and closed the medicine cabinet with a decisive click. He glanced at his reflection once again, and frowned.

'I still look like walking shit, but I guess it'll have to do,' he thought, as he pulled the hair tie over his wrist and headed downstairs to tackle the cleanup job waiting for him.

Yohji groaned as he descended the last stair to stand in the shop's back room. He had vaguely noticed that the place was a mess when he had dashed through earlier, but, in his haste to reach Aya, he hadn't paid attention to the disarray. Now, he stood in the midst of a room that looked like it had just been through World War III, and he could see that the front room was just as bad. Broken pottery, trampled cut flowers, shredded pot plants, and potting soil virtually covered the floor, spilling into every corner of the room. Plastic pots, vases, bolts of ribbon, florists' picks, wire, and foam, which had, previously, been neatly stacked along the counters lining two walls of the room were scattered across the work surfaces and tumbled onto the floor. One of the counters was completely smashed, and Yohji could see wood splinters and shards on the floor and even embedded in the wall across from it. The tall glass coolers, which stood against the room's other two walls, were broken. Their doors were shattered, and the shelves inside fell out onto the floor. It looked like someone had been thrown into them with violent force. There were even sharp pottery shards, dirt, and other debris stuck into or on the room's walls. Water almost covered the floor, and, in spots, it had mixed with the spilled soil to create mud.

Yohji moved forward to survey the front room, wincing as he stepped into the water and felt the cold liquid seep into his shoe. As he moved across the back room, he could hear and feel glass cracking and shattering under his feet, and, by the time he finally reached the front of the shop, both shoes were waterlogged and making squelchy noises as he walked. Yohji frowned as he thought about how, upon initially descending the stairs, he had congratulated himself on maintaining the presence of mind to pull on shoes, but, now, he thought that he shouldn't have even bothered. At least they protected his feet from the glass. He considered it a minor miracle that he hadn't sliced the bottoms of his feet to ribbons earlier in his mad dash across the debris-littered space.

He stood in the doorway separating the shop's two rooms, and found more of the same in the front of the store. The large window to the right of the front door was shattered. He could see the bit of weak sunlight that managed to penetrate through the rain glinting off of the few shards that remained in the window frame, even though Omi had pulled down the store's metal doors to cover the damage and prevent passers by from looting the already-damaged goods in the shop. There was more water here, more dirt, more mud, more broken pottery and vases --- both covering the floor and even reaching up the walls toward the ceiling. Part of the front counter was smashed, both at the base and at the top, as if a body or some other heavy object had been propelled into it with great force. The cash register was tossed to one side; its drawer was open, and cash spilled out into the water covering the floor. The coolers that lined two walls of this room were also broken. Their doors, which were shattered, hung loosely off broken hinges, and the shelves tumbled out onto the floor, along with their contents.

Yohji whistled softly as he surveyed the damage. He gathered his hair into a loose ponytail and held it in place with one hand, pulling the elastic tie off his wrist and into place on his hair with the other. "Looks like Aya put up one hell of a fight," he muttered softly as he finished tightening the elastic band.

He ducked behind the counter to look for a mop and paused as something caught his eye. He hadn't yet clicked on the lights, and the room was only dimly illuminated by the fading, rainy-gray daylight that seeped in around the metal shutters over the windows and the incandescent light coming from the back room. Even so, he could see something glimmering faintly under the counter. Yohji squatted onto his heels and pulled out a small box, wrapped in plain white paper and topped with a glittery ribbon, which was what had drawn his attention, in the first place. He stood and placed the box onto the counter, where the cash register had once stood, and stared at it. With slightly shaking fingers, he pulled the card out from under the ribbon to see the word "Ken" printed on the envelope in Aya's precise handwriting. Yohji stared at the neatly wrapped package for a few moments. He could tell that the redhead had wrapped it himself. The work was too precise, too neat --- in short, it had "Aya" written all over it. He knew what he would find if he looked in the box. He remembered Aya, several days ago, collecting money from him for the season soccer tickets they had purchased for the ex-goalie's birthday. The redhead had seemed almost excited about the gift. Yohji knew that Aya had really been making an effort, in the past few weeks, to open up to the rest of them. Slowly, he had started to reveal more of his emotions and feelings, making an effort to join in their conversations, to laugh with them, just to be with them, instead of hiding away, alone, in his room. Yohji sighed and leaned forward, resting his head on his crossed arms. The thought that Aya could be betrayed by someone he trusted, just as he was starting to regain some of the humanity he had lost, filled him with frustration and anger.

Yohji jumped as a cold, wet nose bumped his leg. Without raising his head, he peered over the edge of the counter and saw Bubba. The big dog whined and leaned companionably against Yohji, wagging his stubby little tail. The tall blonde reached down and absently scratched behind the dog's ears. He couldn't help but feel a little shocked and surprised when Bubba leaned into his touch and whined, as opposed to the normally snarly, surly treatment he was used to receiving from the dog.

"Wow! Looks like you two finally managed to become friends, huh? So, you been sweet-talking the beast with extra treats when no one's looking, or what?" Ken's voice called as the ex-goalie emerged from the back room.

Yohji knew that the brunette was making an effort to keep his voice and expression cheerful, but that pretense disappeared completely when the ex-goalie got a good look at the worried, haunted expression on the older man's face. Yohji tried to smile when he saw Ken's crestfallen look, but he failed, miserably, and ended up simply shrugging, instead.

"Naw, we're not friends," he replied, still scratching Bubba's ears, "He probably just smells Aya on me, that's all."

Ken chuckled. "Yeah, that'd be like that stupid dog. He has a one track mind, especially when it comes to Aya."

"Hnh," Yohji snorted. "True. But, I think I'm starting to like this damn dog more and more. His one track mind probably saved Aya's life today."

Ken nodded. "Yeah. I think I could appreciate him a lot more if I hadn't just spent almost an entire day chasing him across the whole damn city in the rain." He looked up to see the question in Yohji's eyes, and said, "We didn't find Schuldich. We finally found Bubba at a playground on the other side of town. From the way he was acting, I guess he lost that fucking German's scent somewhere near there. From the amount of blood I found on his muzzle, though, I think our little Schu-Schu is going to be nursing one hell of an injury for quite some time." Ken paused for a moment, and then asked, in a quiet voice, "Is he all right?"

Yohji leaned back against the counter, resting his weight on his elbows, and watched as Bubba chased a few shards of pottery and floating cut flowers through the water in the back room. Huffing in satisfaction as he finally managed to catch one of the stems in his mouth, Bubba shook his head, sending water droplets flying through the air, and trotted up the stairs toward the guys' living quarters, the flower bobbing up and down with his movements, as he clutched it triumphantly in his mouth, like a trophy. The tall blonde chuckled softly and shook his head. The snarling, enraged beast he'd seen earlier today, bent on nothing more than ruthlessly killing his prey, was nothing like the happy-go-lucky, playful puppy he saw now. He didn't understand how the dog could be one thing at one moment and another, completely opposite thing, just hours later.

Ken gently nudged Yohji with his shoulder, bringing the older man back from his thoughts. Yohji looked at the ex-goalie absently for a moment, and then said, "Uh yeah. More or less."

"More or less?" Ken asked in a wary tone.

Yohji shrugged. "Ninety stitches or more in his back. A concussion, according to the ER chart I glimpsed. And, a lovely set of fingerprint-shaped bruises on his throat," he finally said, clenching his fist tightly and slamming it into the countertop as he pictured his bruised and battered friend.

"Shit," Ken breathed softly. "They keep him at the hospital?"

Yohji laughed at that thought. "They tried. You know Aya and hospitals. He's upstairs, sleeping off the painkillers. I expect, when we look later, we'll find one very wet dog in bed with him along with Omi." He snickered at the shocked look Ken gave him and shook his head as he said, "Get your mind out of the gutter, you idiot. Geez, when did you turn into such a perv, anyhow? The kid was worried about leaving Aya alone. But, have you seen Omi lately? He looks like walking crap. I think he's got the flu or something. So, I put him to bed, too."

"Just one big happy family, right?" Ken asked, grinning.

"You know it, little brother," Yohji said, laughing. He grabbed Ken in a headlock and rubbed the ex-goalie's hair roughly with his knuckles as Ken struggled to get free. "By the way," Yohji said, finally releasing his prisoner. He pushed the little box toward Ken as he said, "Sorry, but looks like we're going to have to cancel your birthday bash, all things considered. But, here. Happy Birthday."

Ken looked at Yohji for several moments. He thought he had heard something, some hint of emotion --- sadness, maybe, or regret --- in Yohji's voice, but he couldn't read the older man's expression in the quickly darkening room. Shrugging, Ken reached over and flipped on the overhead lights, bathing the room in a sudden flash of illumination, and looked over at the older man. Yohji blinked as his eyes adjusted to the increased light level. Without his almost omnipresent sunglasses, the tall blonde looked tired, haggard, worried, and, suddenly, very old --- much older than his twenty-two years. Ken found himself wondering when Yohji had started to look so worn out, but he knew that they had all been running on the thin side of things for the past few weeks --- ever since Aya had been sick. He had to admit, that, if he looked into a mirror, he'd probably see a similar reflection staring back at him.

"Well?" Yohji asked, jarring Ken back to reality. "You gonna open it or what?"

"Yeah, yeah," Ken grinned, ducking his head to try and hide his embarrassment. "Sorry. I'm just surprised you guys even remembered to get a gift or anything you know, with how busy we've been lately."

Yohji shrugged. "You can thank Aya," he said. "There are two more under the counter for you. That one's the real gift, from all of us. The others are from him, something he said he owed you." He shrugged again in response to the unasked question in Ken's eyes. "I'm guessing you'll understand when you see them."

Yohji moved away from the counter and started mopping the floor. He pulled a large trashcan into the middle of the room and occasionally knelt down to retrieve broken pottery shards and toss them into it as he mopped. He paused and smiled, laughing softly and shaking his head, as he listened to Ken's shouts and whoops of joy at discovering the soccer tickets.

"OH, MAN! THIS IS THIS IS SO GREAT!" Ken yelled. The ex-goalie leaped around the counter and ran to the middle of the room, splashing through the water covering the floor and holding out the tickets as if they were a trophy. He jumped up and down, hugging the taller blonde, who had stood as he approached. "NO, REALLY!! YOU HAVE NO IDEA! THESE SEATS I MEAN, THEY ARE FREAKIN' BAD ASS!" he screamed.

Yohji laughed and, gently but firmly, extricated himself from Ken's grasp. "Great," he said, shoving the ex-goalie's arms away from his neck. "Not that I'm not happy for you or anything, but getting hugged by another man isn't my idea of fun, you know? And, stop jumping around. You're splashing water all over me!"

"Sorry," Ken said. He chuckled in embarrassment and moved over to the counter, carefully placing the tickets on top of it, out of harm's way. Then, he moved over to the doorway separating the two rooms and pulled on his apron, which was still hanging on a nail embedded in the door frame, an odd bit of order in a world lately thrown into complete and utter chaos. Still smiling over the good fortune of his gift, he moved to the middle of the room. He knelt next to Yohji, picking up pieces of broken pottery and depositing them in the trash can as the older man mopped.

They worked in silence until a noise drew Yohji's attention to the back room. He looked up and frowned when he saw Hank cross the threshold separating the two spaces. The new arrival smiled at his friends as he entered the room, seemingly oblivious to the hostile glare he received from the tall blonde.

"Sheeit!" Hank exclaimed, drawling out the short word and whistling softly as he looked at the wrecked room. "What the hell happened in here, anyhow?"

"Uh," Ken replied, groping for words.

"Someone broke in," Yohji cut in.

His voice was hard, drawing Ken's attention toward him, and the ex-goalie was shocked to see Yohji's eyes glittering with rage. He had been watching the tall blonde kill for some time now, but he hadn't ever seen Yohji this angry. He didn't understand why, but he sensed that the blonde's anger was directed toward Hank. He could feel the tension between his older teammate and the dark-haired man who had become their employee and friend. It was almost as if it was a tangible thing that he could reach for and grab out of the air. Ken stood slowly, mentally preparing to either assist Yohji or break up the impending confrontation between the two men, depending on which way things developed in the next few minutes.

"Anything stolen?" Hank asked. He glanced from Yohji's angry glare to Ken's confused stare, unable to quite make the connection between the mess around him and his friends' reactions.

Yohji decided that Hank was playing dumb on purpose. The tall blonde was suddenly unable to contain the fury and rage that had been building in him ever since he had seen Schuldich standing in the shop's front room earlier that day. He had resolved that he wouldn't jump to any snap judgments until Aya was awake enough to tell them what had happened, but, now, looking at this man who had professed to be Aya's friend, Yohji could feel that resolve quickly melting away. When he looked at Hank, all he could see was the panicked, pained look on Aya's face as he fell through the front window, and Schuldich's smug, self-satisfied grin as he threw Aya into the street. With cat-like reflexes honed through years of work as an assassin, Yohji crossed the space separating him from Hank, and, before Ken even had time to react, he had fisted his hands in the dark-haired man's jacket and jerked Hank angrily upward, holding him a few inches off the floor.

"You son of a bitch!" he hissed through clenched teeth. His voice was low and angry, barely audible in the room, and his eyes glittered with a dangerous hatred as he pulled Hank toward him, until the man's face was just inches from his own. He felt a little surge of satisfaction when he saw how the color drained from the dark-haired man's face and how Hank's adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed uneasily. "Someone broke in here and attacked Aya," he hissed.

"Yohji! Yohji, stop it!" Ken snapped. He shoved his shoulder between the two men and tried to pry Yohji away from Hank. The ex-goalie looked nervously from the tall blonde to the smaller, dark-haired man who dangled from Yohji's grip. Hank was shaking, the color had completely drained from his face, and he seemed genuinely shocked at what Yohji was saying. "Yohji!" he snapped again, grabbing his teammate's wrist, "Stop it! Let him go! He doesn't know anything." Ken squeezed Yohji's wrist hard enough to make him loosen his grip, and he used his shoulder to shove the tall blonde back a few steps, effectively freeing Hank, who stumbled backward and fell to a sitting position on the wet floor.

Hank stared up at Yohji with wide, scared eyes. Ken was busy shoving the enraged blonde, who was struggling against him, backward, but, when he glanced down to reassure himself that Hank was all right, he thought he saw something else in the Texan's eyes --- maybe sadness, maybe regret. He wasn't sure. He had to quickly turn his attention back to Yohji as the tall blonde almost managed to struggle away from him. Yohji was furious, and he clearly wasn't thinking straight. He jumped against Ken and tried to shove the younger man out of the way as he fought to get free from the ex-goalie's restraining arms. The tall blonde growled in frustration as he reached around Ken in an attempt to once again grab Hank.

"Yohji!" Ken snapped. He finally shoved the taller man roughly backward, causing Yohji to also fall to the floor with a loud splash. "Enough! Settle the fuck down!"

Yohji didn't try to get up. He glared past Ken at Hank, who was slowly picking himself up off the floor. "Get him out of here," he snarled. "Get him the fuck outta my sight before I kill him. I mean it."

"Y Yohji," Ken stammered. He kept himself carefully positioned between Yohji and Hank, but he looked from one man to the other. "I I don't understand. He's he's Aya's friend. I I wouldn't have been able to find that stupid dog without his help. What what the hell is going on with you?"

"GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" Yohji screamed his face now red with unreleased rage.

"You I think you'd better leave," Ken stammered. He followed Hank into the back room, to let the dark-haired man out, but he kept his eyes locked on Yohji, as if that alone would keep his older teammate from lunging after Hank.

As they reached the back door, Hank looked up at Ken. "Is is he Ran all right?" he asked.

The ex-goalie turned his attention away from Yohji, and was surprised to see unshed tears brimming in Hank's eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah. He's he's OK. I'm not sure what happened, exactly, but I think he fell through the window. I just can't figure out how it happened, though. It's not easy to get the drop on Aya. I mean, he looks skinny and wimpy, but he's really not."

"But but, he's OK?" Hank asked again. He couldn't stop his voice from shaking.

Ken nodded. "A lot of stitches like ninety or more, a concussion, some bruises. He's upstairs sleeping. He'll be fine, really." He placed a friendly hand on Hank's shoulder. "Hey, there's no need to look so upset. It's not like it's your fault, or anything."

"**Where** Aya is and **how** Aya is isn't any of his concern," Yohji's cold, hard voice made Ken jump.

The ex-goalie turned toward the doorway separating the shop's front and back rooms. The tall blonde was standing there, leaning against one side of the doorjamb. His clothing was soaked from his spill in the water, and his hair had come loose during his struggle with Ken. It looked as if he had managed to regain control of his emotions, but Ken could see that Yohji's hands were shaking, and his eyes still glittered with furious, unspent anger.

As he spoke, Yohji removed the elastic tie holding the remaining hair back, and shook out the long, wet strands. "Out of respect for Aya, I'm letting you leave. Don't come near him again. If you do, I swear, I'll make you beg to die, and I'll enjoy doing it, too." He pulled his hair back into a ponytail, once again securing it with the elastic tie, and turned back to the front room, after giving Hank one last, hateful glare.

Ken watched Yohji retreat and shook his head slowly. "Look," he told Hank, "I I don't know what his problem is, but I'll straighten it out. I'll I'll get to the bottom of it. We won't be open for a while, anyhow, with all this damage, so just lay low, OK? Don't worry. I'll fix everything."

As he ducked out of the shop, Hank whispered, "You can't fix this. I'm I'm sorry, Ken. Will you tell Ran for me? Will you tell him that I'm sorry?"

****


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER 6**

The rain had stopped for a while, but it had just started up again, a slow, steady drizzle that seemed to hang in the streetlights' glow like a soft, diaphanous curtain. Ken stood in the flower shop's back doorway and watched as Hank slowly walked down the alley. The normally cheerful, jovial man walked away from him looking like a much older person --- bent over, hunched against the slightly chilly breeze, and moving with a stumbling, slow gait as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. Ken watched until Hank's figure blurred in the darkness between the streetlights, and, finally, seemed to blend in and melt away with the drizzling rain. Once he had disappeared completely, the ex-goalie retreated back into the warmth of the flower shop, lost in thought.

There was definitely something going on between Yohji and Hank, and Ken had a nagging suspicion that it had something to do with Schuldich's unexpected visit. All he wanted to do was pretend everything was fine, go back into the front room, and help Yohji clean up the mess, but the edgy, jittery feeling he'd gotten that afternoon, when he'd stumbled downstairs to find the shop and Aya wrecked, had grown steadily throughout the day. Now, it was screaming through his mind like a freight train, assaulting his senses, and he felt ready to jump out of his skin at the slightest provocation. No matter how much he wanted to ignore the uneasy feeling slowly taking over his mind, years of experience as an assassin had taught Ken not to ignore his instincts. They were almost always right.

He stood in the doorway leading into the front of the store and watched Yohji. The older man was silently going about the business of cleaning up, mopping up the water covering the floor, scooting the broken pottery into piles for easier pick up, and, occasionally, stooping to pick up a particularly large shard, which he would toss, unceremoniously, into the trash can in the middle of the room. Ken couldn't see his face, as his back was to the door, but the ex-goalie could tell that his older teammate was still very upset. To most people, the tall blonde would appear perfectly calm, completely recovered from his earlier outburst and scuffle with Hank, but Ken wasn't most people. He had lived, worked, and killed with Yohji for longer than he cared to remember --- long enough that he could read the older man's body language like an open book. Everything about the blonde --- the stiffness in his shoulders and back, hands clenching the mop handle so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, the way he angrily shoved water and broken pottery around the floor with quick, jerking motions --- told Ken that Yohji was anything but calm. Yohji was protective of all of them, but, especially so with Aya. Where the redhead was concerned, the tall blonde had a mother bear vicious streak, and Ken had no doubt that, if Hank had been involved in Schuldich's attack in any way, the chain-smoking idiot would kill him the next time they met. He figured he had watched Yohji kill hundreds of people in a cold, emotionless, methodical manner, but he hadn't ever seen the tall blonde driven to the point of uncontrolled, homicidal rage --- until today. Ken decided that he had to be careful in approaching Yohji right now. The older man was still upset about Aya and full of unspent rage, a combination that could make him deadly dangerous. Ken didn't have any desire to fight with the blonde, and he wanted to protect himself from injury. But, more than that, he wanted to protect Yohji from doing something he would regret later. After several minutes, Ken decided that his only choice was to gamble on the chance that their friendship, a bond forged in blood, would protect him from Yohji's anger. He couldn't just leave things the way they were --- even if his mind screamed at him that walking away would be the sensible thing to do.

Ken sighed heavily, squaring his shoulders and mentally preparing for the possibility of confrontation, and moved into the front room. He stopped just inside the doorway, several feet away from the older man. "Yohji?" he called softly. He waited for a few seconds, but, when the other man didn't respond, he repeated, a little louder, "Yohji."

The older man stiffened, almost imperceptibly, and replied, "Yeah?" His voice was tired and flat, and he didn't bother turning from his work.

Ken cleared his throat and asked, "What what happened? What's going on?"

"I don't want to talk about it." Yohji stated, still in that same, flat, voice, edged with exhaustion, irritation, and, maybe, even a little fear.

"Maybe not, but I think we need to," Ken said, inching a little further into the room.

Yohji still didn't turn to face him, but Ken saw the older man's shoulders droop slightly, as if he was resigning himself to the fact that he was never going to win this argument. Finally, the tall blonde turned around, and Ken was shocked to see that his eyes were red with unshed tears. He couldn't remember ever seeing Yohji this way. He desperately wanted to offer whatever emotional support he could to the older man, so he struggled to keep the shocked expression off of his face and out of his eyes. He knew he had failed when he saw the brief, humorless smirk that crossed Yohji's mouth.

"You don't have to look so surprised. We might be murderers, but we still have some emotions, right?"

Ken ducked his head in an effort to hide his embarrassment. "S sorry," he stammered. "Did did Hank do something? Was he involved, somehow, with what happened today?"

Yohji startled Ken by suddenly sinking down into a sitting position, heedless of the water, glass, and mud still covering the floor, as if exhaustion and the events of the day had finally caught up to him, and Ken immediately began to move across the floor toward him. Yohji waved his hand, halting Ken's advance, and the ex-goalie stopped next to the counter. He leaned back against it, resting his weight on his elbows.

"Hank," Yohji hissed through clenched teeth, unable to keep the anger from his voice, "is one topic I'm not willing to discuss at this moment."

"But " Ken started to protest, only to be cut off when another wave of Yohji's hand indicated that the blonde wasn't going to waver from his decision.

"There will be no discussion of Hank or his possible involvement in this," Yohji said, waving his hand through the air to indicate the general disarray surrounding them, "until Aya can be present. Knowing our red-haired friend, he probably has a pretty good idea of what really happened. Don't get me wrong. I have my own theories, and I don't think I'm wrong. I just want to wait and give Aya a chance to confirm it. Hank is was really his friend, after all."

Ken frowned at Yohji's use of the word "was". He stared at the older man for a few minutes before finally saying, "All right. Fair enough. But, can you at least tell me what happened here?"

Yohji nodded. "I can try. I I don't really know exactly what happened, but I think I've mostly pieced it together, from what I saw and from what Omi told me." He sighed and rolled his head from side to side, stretching tense, cramped neck muscles, and then continued, "I was upstairs, sleeping, and that damn dog's barking woke me up. When I came down, I found Bubba locked in the stairwell, trying to break through the door to get in here. At first I thought Aya had accidentally locked him in there. You know, that he was just upset at being separated from Aya, but Bubba, he was just going crazy barking and snarling, tearing and clawing at the stairs and door. He was practically foaming at the mouth, he was so frenzied and mad. That damn dog hasn't ever been exactly "cuddly", but I've never seen him like that. I mean, he was ready to kill. I opened the door to the stairwell, and went into the back room. It was like this like there had been one hell of a fight. I got close enough to see part of the front room, before Bubba ran me over, and I saw Schuldich. He he was he was " Yohji's voice trailed off, and he got a faraway look in his eyes, as if he was seeing the entire scene again in his mind. His voice was shaking when he continued, "He had Aya by the throat holding him off the floor. I don't know how long they had been fighting, but Aya was about at the end of his rope. He wasn't even really struggling anymore like he had finally given up. Anyhow, Bubba jumped at them and sank his teeth into Schuldich, but he knocked them through the window. I managed to get there right after, while they were still on the sidewalk, and Schuldich was fighting with the dog. But, he managed to get away before I could get to Aya. He pushed Bubba into me, and, before I could get up, he he grabbed Aya, and and threw him into the street, I guess, to keep me from chasing him. Then, he ran away. Bubba went after him, and I went after Aya." He paused and drew his knees up to his chest, resting his elbows on them, and hid his face in his cupped palms. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled, and sounded as if it was on the verge of breaking. "Shit! Aya I mean shit. There was a car coming right for him, and he couldn't do anything. I remember thinking thinking I wasn't going to get there in time. I thought he was dead that I was going to have to watch him die. But, I got to him in time and pulled him out."

"Shit," Ken whispered, almost under his breath. "Yohji I I'm sorry."

Yohji sighed, but he didn't remove his face from his hands. "Why? It's not your fault. After I got back from the hospital, I asked Omi, and he said that Aya had picked him up at school. He said Aya had already closed the shop for the day because he still wasn't feeling up to working alone. He told me everything was dark and quiet when they got here, and he headed right for the stairs, to go to sleep. He thought Aya was right behind him, but Aya told him to go ahead. He said Aya heard something in the shop and left to check it out."

"But," Ken said, slowly, very uncomfortable with the conclusions his mind seemed determined to draw, "that that means "

Yohji nodded, "Yeah. I think Schuldich was here, waiting for him inside the shop."

"But, if the front door was locked," Ken started.

"It gets worse," Yohji said, cutting Ken's statement off, "Omi said he found Bubba locked in Aya's room. He let the dog out, and it went tearing off down the stairs. But, Omi didn't know the door at the bottom was already closed. Aya must have closed it to keep the noise from waking us. I think he knew Schuldich was here, but he told Omi to go upstairs and then closed the door to keep us from getting involved."

"That's crazy! He has trouble handling Schuldich alone, even on his best days given that bastard's telepathic abilities. And, he's been trying to hide it, but we all know he really hasn't recovered from the pneumonia."

"Yeah, but, it's just like him," Yohji said softly. He was staring at the floor directly in front of him, but it was obvious that his eyes weren't really seeing anything at all. "He knows we're all at our limits. Fucking Kritiker and Persia haven't given us one damn break while he's been down. He knows we've all been running ourselves ragged trying to comply with their demands. He's quiet, but he has eyes. He notices everything, and he worries, even though he'd never admit it out loud. I think he felt guilty because of what Kritiker and Persia were putting all of us through; he felt like it was his fault. And, Omi was already sick. He wouldn't take a chance on one of us getting hurt. He decided to try and handle it on his own, even though he knew he would probably lose. Stupid, stubborn, little prick."

Yohji slammed his fist into the floor, and Ken jumped involuntarily at the loud splashing sound it made. When he met the older man's eyes once again, he saw that the hard, angry look had returned to them.

"The thing that really burns me up," Yohji said, his voice hard, cold, and angry, "is that we were all **I** was right upstairs the whole time. I slept through the whole fucking thing. If Bubba hadn't woken me up " He shuddered as he voiced the rest of his thought, "If that fucking dog hadn't woken me up, we we would have just found Aya down here dead killed right under our noses strangled to death right in our home in our** fucking home**!"

He slammed his fist into the water covering the floor, once again causing Ken to jump. The ex-goalie hadn't thought things through far enough to realize they would have come downstairs to find the shop torn up and Aya dead, without any explanation, but, as he thought about it, he realized Yohji was right. At the sudden realization, he felt the anger, up-to-now-dormant, begin to well up inside of him. He hadn't ever been a member of the Aya Fujimiya fan club, like Yohji and Omi; he had always believed, and continued to believe, that Aya was an asshole, plain and simple, and he found the redhead too overbearing and uptight to develop any true fondness for him. Still, Aya was Weiss, and, as such, asshole or not, he was as good as family. The thought that someone could walk right into their home, their one haven in the world, and take away a member of his family started to burn and eat away at Ken, until he could well understand Yohji's urge to kill anyone who might have had even the slightest involvement in this debacle. Still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he wanted to believe that Hank hadn't been involved. The older man's friendship had been good for Aya; it was largely thanks to Hank that the quiet redhead had finally started to act like something approaching human. Aya was tough, strong, and, at times, even seemed invincible, but, in terms of human emotions and feelings, he was as fragile and vulnerable as a newborn, and Ken was surprised to find he couldn't stand the thought that someone the redhead cared about would prey upon that vulnerability. Now, he realized exactly why Yohji was so venomously angry with Hank. Ken fought down his anger, though, for Aya's sake. Yohji wouldn't be able to think or act rationally in this situation, and, if Hank was the traitor Yohji believed him to be, Aya would need all the support he could get. 

"But," Ken said, once he had managed to get his emotions under control, "that didn't happen. We should just be thankful for that, and go from there."

"Yeah," Yohji replied. He got slowly to his feet and brushed at his wet clothing. "I'm going upstairs to change my clothes and check on Aya. I'll be back to help with the cleaning, though."

************************************************************

Yohji stood in the doorway to his room and quietly watched the trio sleeping on his bed. At some point in time, Aya and Omi, who were sleeping back-to-back, had switched places. The younger blonde now slept on the side of the bed nearest the wall, his back toward the door, and Aya was on the near side, facing the doorway. Yohji smiled when he saw that he had been right about the dog. Bubba had crawled right into bed with Aya and Omi, and the wet dog was lying in between the two assassins, his head and large front paws draped over Aya's still body. Yohji shook his head and silently thanked his lucky stars that Omi had brought Aya's comforter into the room. Having wet dog in his bed was bad enough, but having the animal on his comforter would have been more than Yohji could bear.

Yohji sank into the chair that stood next to the bed. He leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees. From his position, he was less than a foot away from the bed, and almost at eye-level with Aya. Yohji glanced over at the digital clock on his bedside table, which indicated it was almost two in the morning. He and Ken had given up cleaning about an hour ago, and the tall blonde had just emerged from a very satisfying, steaming-hot shower. They had worked on the mess downstairs for hours, but it still looked like they had days of labor ahead of them before they'd be able to put everything back as it was. The room was dark, only dimly illuminated by the light that came in from the hallway, and it took Yohji several minutes to realize that Aya was awake, quietly watching him.

"Hey," he whispered, leaning forward. He smiled, although he knew that Aya probably couldn't see it in the darkened room.

"Hnh," Aya replied. His voice was hoarse, and sounded distant, as if he couldn't quite figure out where he was. After pausing for a few moments, he coughed softly and said, "You've been spending a lot of time in that chair."

"You've been spending a lot of time flat on your back," Yohji countered. "Frankly, it's a habit I wish you'd get out of."

Aya laughed softly. "Yeah that makes two of us." He struggled to move out from under Bubba's weight, groaning in pain at the effort.

"Wait a minute," Yohji said. He quickly moved forward to push the dog off of Aya. "Can't have you popping your stitches. You'd bleed all over my damn bed and I love this bed. It's bad enough I'm never getting the wet dog smell out."

He gave Bubba one last shove, silently praying that the dog wouldn't wake up and chew his arm off, but the animal just groaned and rolled over onto his back, all four paws held high in the air. He snuggled deeper into the soft, down comforter with a quiet little snore and grunt of pleasure.

"Thanks," Aya said, as Yohji pulled him into a sitting position. He paused on the edge of the bed, his legs dangling over the side, and then, slowly, started to stand up.

"Hey, just a minute!" Yohji exclaimed softly as Aya lurched forward and almost fell. He jumped out of the chair and barely managed to keep the younger man upright. "Where the hell are you going?"

Aya sighed. "The bathroom," he whispered, irritated at not being able to make it on his own.

"All right," Yohji replied. "But, I'm going with. I don't want you taking a header down the stairs or something."

Aya nodded. He didn't really want Yohji's help, but he was too weak and exhausted to argue the point. He leaned heavily against the taller man, and wordlessly allowed Yohji to half-way carry him the short distance down the hallway. At the bathroom door, though, he stopped and made a heroic attempt to glare at his tall blonde assistant.

"You're not coming in," Aya stated.

Yohji thought about it for a minute. He could have probably argued with Aya and won out, considering that the redhead was in pain and just coming off of the effects of the painkillers. But, when he really thought about it, he didn't want to go in, anyhow, so he wisely decided to let the subject drop. He had learned through painful experience that, when it came to Aya, one had to choose one's battles carefully.

"OK," Yohji said, nodding in agreement. "But, I'm waiting right out here. If I hear anything that sounds remotely like something falling, crashing, or breaking, I'm coming in."

Aya rolled his eyes at the ceiling, but he just said, "Fair enough," as he pushed his way into the bathroom and clicked on the light.

Yohji slid to a sitting position on the floor, prepared to wait until Aya was ready to make the short trek back to bed. He stared at the ceiling and forced his mind away from the events of the previous afternoon and his theories on how Schuldich had managed to get into the flower shop so easily. Thinking about it just made him angry, and it didn't do any good, anyhow. At this moment, there wasn't anything he could do but take care of Aya and try to make sure the incident didn't repeat itself.

After a while, Yohji glanced down at his watch, and was shocked to find that almost twenty minutes had elapsed. He put his ear to the bathroom door, but he couldn't hear anything. It seemed that the room beyond was eerily silent --- too silent --- and Yohji felt the now all-too-familiar surge of panic well up in his chest.

He tapped lightly on the door and called, "Aya? Aya, you OK in there?" He placed his ear against the door again to listen for a response. When none seemed forthcoming, he called out, "Aya, answer me! Are you all right?" He held his breath and listened for any sound from his friend. When he didn't hear anything, he knocked on the door again and called, "I'm coming in, OK?"

Just as he was turning the door knob, he heard Aya's slightly groggy voice, "It's OK. I'm all right Sorry."

Within a couple of seconds, Yohji heard the sound of the toilet flushing, followed by running water, and then Aya opened the door to emerge back into the hall. He tripped over the edge of the carpet as he exited the bathroom, and Yohji barely managed to catch him in time to keep him from falling head-first into the opposite wall.

"Shit!" the blonde hissed. "You scared the piss outta me!"

"Sorry," Aya mumbled. "I I kinda zoned out for a few minutes."

"It's OK," Yohji replied. He gently pushed the redhead back into a fully standing position, wincing as his hand brushed across Aya's back, causing the younger man to stifle a cry of pain. "What were you doing awake, anyhow? I figured you'd be so pumped full of painkillers that you'd sleep for a couple of days."

Aya shook his head slowly. "I I only let them give me a local and one pain shot. It's starting to wear off, and I couldn't sleep. This hurts like hell."

"We can fix that," Yohji started to comment, but Aya cut him off with a decisive head shake.

"No. I don't like the way it feels to be drugged up. Something could happen, and I "

"Don't be stupid," Yohji hissed. He gently shook the younger man to add emphasis to his words. "You have to sleep in order to heal. You keep on like this, and you're never going to recover. I know you're still sick from the last mission, and, now, this." He rolled his eyes when he saw the surprised look Aya gave him. "Oh, come on. You don't honestly think you were fooling any of us, do you? We all know you're still sick. You've got to stop pushing yourself. Nothing's going to happen, OK? I'm right here, and I'll stay with you the whole time. I promise."

When Aya continued to stubbornly shake his head, Yohji sighed in frustration. "Well, it doesn't matter, anyhow," he muttered, pulling Aya back into the bathroom.

He deposited the unsteady redhead on the closed toilet, taking advantage of the only handy seat in the small room, and turned to fumble briefly through the medicine cabinet. He quickly located the pain medication the ER doctor had prescribed, and silently thanked the odd little man for his foresight in prescribing an injectible dosage. Obviously, the doctor had had a lot of trouble getting Aya to cooperate, which had led him to correctly conclude they would have to force the medication on the redhead. Yohji quickly filled a syringe with the recommended dose, and turned back toward his uncooperative patient.

Aya started to protest as the tall blonde pulled up his sleeve and administered the injection, but Yohji just shook his head and said, "It's for your own good. Besides, you're not in any condition to fight me on this one. When you're better, I'll gladly let you beat the shit out of me." He laughed softly and commented, "Well, I'll gladly let you **try**."

It only took a few seconds for the drug to start working. Yohji was relieved to see the tight expression on Aya's face and the pain lines around his mouth and eyes smooth out as the younger man slipped into sleep. When Aya slumped forward, Yohji gathered him in his arms and carried him back to his bedroom.

As he gently settled Aya back in his bed, Yohji ruffled the redhead's bangs slightly and muttered, "Yep. If I'm gonna have to keep hauling your ass around like this, you're definitely going on that diet!"

****


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER 7**

The sunlight slanting through the window over Yohji's bed finally worked its way into Aya's subconscious and slowly pulled him into the waking world. He groaned and wriggled out from under Bubba's weight enough to roll over onto his back, wincing and hissing sharply in pain as he felt his stitches tug and pull. He threw one arm across his face to shield his eyes from the sun. He left enough space so that he could slightly see around his arm, and, as he stared at the long crack running across the ceiling directly above Yohji's bed, he struggled to gather his muddy thoughts.

The last thing he could remember with any clarity was coming back to the shop after picking Omi up at school, and feeling uneasy when Bubba failed to meet them at the kitchen door. He had been exhausted; all he had wanted to do upon coming home was curl up in bed and sleep. He remembered hearing a noise from somewhere in the shop. He had told Omi to go upstairs; that he would check it out, but, after that, everything was pretty much a blank. Well, not a total blank. He caught flashes of memory here and there --- shattering glass, breaking wood, a feeling of falling, and crazy laughter.

'Crazy laughter?' Aya thought. 'Laughing, as if someone was having the time of their life laughing at me '

Suddenly, the floodgates of his mind seemed to open, and he remembered everything. He bolted upright, his heart hammering against his chest in a panic, and immediately regretted the sudden movement as his tortured body screamed out in protest against this new abuse. He fell back heavily against the soft mattress and struggled to bring his heartbeat and breathing under control.

He could see it all in his mind now. The noise had drawn his attention to the store's back room. Something about it just hadn't seemed right, probably because of the dog's absence. When he didn't take Bubba out with him, the big dog was always waiting at the kitchen door when he returned home. This time, though, the dog was absent, and Aya hadn't heard him moving around in the shop or apartment upstairs. He had felt uneasy and panicked, and he remembered thinking that he couldn't involve Omi, considering how sick the boy was. He had told Omi it was nothing, that the dog had probably knocked over a display, and, after the kid had retreated to what he hoped was the relative safety of the upstairs rooms, he had moved, with all the practiced ease and stealth learned during his years as an assassin, to investigate the suspicious noise.

Aya had known that he wasn't quite up to his usual fighting strength, but, even at half strength or less, he was more than a match for just about anyone. Still, Schuldich had managed to completely get the drop on him. The German had been waiting for him when he entered the shop's darkened back room, and had immediately attacked him. He had let his guard down, started to think of the shop as "home", and, consequently, had slowly allowed himself to relax. He mentally kicked himself for that lapse now. It could have gotten his entire team killed, and it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security by thinking of the shop and their apartment as safe havens.

Shock and surprise at seeing this most despised enemy in his own personal sanctuary had caused Aya to freeze for the smallest fraction of time, which had been all Schuldich had needed to gain an advantage in the ensuing fight. Aya had immediately been forced to go on the defensive. He had had enough experience fighting Schuldich --- all of Schwartz, really --- to know that you only came out on top in that kind of confrontation by quickly taking the offensive. The assassins in Schwartz were particularly brutal, and the only way to fight them and live to tell about it was to attack --- brutally, mercilessly, and frequently. His split-second pause had caused him to lose that slim thread of advantage, which had probably been what the German was banking on when he had set up the ambush in the flower shop.

Aya remembered being terrified that Schuldich had harmed Yohji and Ken, and that, if he was unable to hold the German off, he would go after Omi, too. But, as they fought, Schuldich, ever the mastermind telepath, had broken into his thoughts, whispering soothingly that he didn't have to worry; he was the only worthwhile plaything in Weiss. Aya shivered involuntarily as he remembered how the German's voice had sounded in his head --- sing-song, silky-smooth, and disgustingly sweet. It had been as if Schuldich had expected him to be pleased at all of the attention he was getting from Schwartz, and, in particular, from him. It still gave Aya the creeps, and he shivered again, pulling the comforter tighter around his body and snuggling closer to the warm safety offered by Bubba's big bulk, which was right next to him.

The fight with Schuldich was, mostly, one big blur, but he remembered that it had been long, painful, and very, very destructive. He couldn't ever remember fighting so desperately or so hard. He could remember the end, though. He could still feel the German's fingers clenched around his throat, tightening ever so slowly, choking the life out of him as he dangled a few inches off the floor. He vaguely recalled a huge, blurry, black shape crashing into them. Had that been Bubba? Then, he remembered falling in the midst of what seemed like millions of sparkling, glittering shapes. He wasn't sure right now, but he thought the shapes had been shards of glass, from the front window shattering. He remembered how he had felt so oddly detached, as if this was all happening to someone else and he was standing on the sidelines, just watching. As an observer, he remembered thinking how beautiful the sparkly shapes were; the way they glittered and danced in the rain and half-light of the cloudy day had been fascinating.

But, in the midst of all that deadly beautiful sparkle, there had been something else --- Yohji's face. He could still see the terrified, panicked look in the older man's eyes, and, from what had seemed like far away, someone screaming his name. It occurred to him now that the "someone" was probably Yohji. Good old Yohji. Aya couldn't ever remember seeing that expression --- one of sheer terror --- on the tall blonde's face; Yohji always laughed and joked his way through every dire situation they encountered, and, for some time now, he had thought of the oldest Weiss assassin as some kind of crazy, homicidal, invincible badass who wasn't scared of anything. He remembered how he had taken one look at Yohji's expression and thought, 'Shit. I'm going to die.'

After that, he just remembered little snatches --- landing on the cold, wet concrete under what felt like a ton of weight; struggling to breathe; falling again; someone --- probably Yohji --- yanking him back onto the sidewalk; the hustle and bustle of a busy emergency room; the nervous, twitchy doctor who had treated him; and what had seemed at the time to be about a million stitches. One other memory came floating out of the haze toward him --- Yohji pumping him full of painkillers.

A sound brought his attention toward the side of the bed, and, after a few minutes, he managed to focus his fuzzy vision enough to see Yohji sitting in the large, overstuffed armchair that was pulled up next to the bed. The tall blonde was stretched out, his legs extended in front of him until his feet disappeared under the bed, his arms dangling loosely over the sides of the chair, and his head thrown back over the chair's back. He was snoring softly.

Aya's eyes narrowed in irritation as he continued to fight off the fog that seemed intent on engulfing his entire body. "You asshole," he muttered.

He finally managed to push himself into a sitting position, biting off the groan of pain that threatened to escape his lips. The last thing he wanted to do right now was wake up Yohji. If he did, Aya knew he'd end up flat on his back again before he knew what hit him. He knew that the tall blonde wouldn't hesitate to drug him again if he thought he had to. Still, much as he hated to admit it, Yohji had been right; he had needed the rest.

As he slowly swung his feet over the side of the bed and absently watched them dangle in space, Aya wondered how long he had been asleep. The floating, detached feeling and the fact that he was able to move even though his body hurt like hell told him the painkillers were probably still in there, working their magic. Judging from the way he felt, he might have been out for days. His mouth was fuzzy and dry, as if it had been stuffed with cotton, and his vision alternated between tunneling down to a small pin-point and blurring out completely. His head felt like it wasn't even attached to his body; he was having an extremely hard time focusing his thoughts enough to decide on his next course of action, and he had the distinct feeling that, if he tried to move around, his body would probably float away altogether.

He vaguely recalled coming out of his drug-induced haze enough to notice Omi sleeping next to him. He hadn't minded, really; it had reminded him of times when Aya would climb into bed with him to escape a bad dream or the lightening from a storm, which had always terrified her. Feeling the boy's weight against his back, like a warm, little ball, had been comforting --- a reminder that he wasn't alone. It was the same reason he let Bubba sleep with him. He knew the rest of the team had been shocked at that, but Aya was comforted by the animal's big, furry, body. It made him feel safe; it made him feel like he still mattered, like he wasn't alone in the world.

Aya twisted around to look at the other side of the bed. Bubba was still there, nestled into the comforter and snoring softly, but Omi was gone. The boy's absence could indicate that he had been asleep for some time, but that wasn't necessarily the case. It could also mean nothing more than that Omi had woken up after Yohji came into the room, and had decided to return to his own bed.

Sighing in frustration, Aya finally decided to chance standing up. He did it slowly, closing his eyes, holding his breath, and waving his arms slightly for balance as the room seemed to tilt away from him at a crazy angle. After a couple of minutes, though, everything seemed to straighten out, and he discovered he was only slightly dizzy. He felt encouraged enough to try walking, and he was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was able to control his motor skills enough to make it out of the room without falling flat on his face. He moved slowly and stiffly, struggling to hold his upper body as still as possible. The pain in his back had reached a mind-splitting level, hampering his range of motion, but at least he was mobile.

After reaching the hall and traveling the short distance to the bathroom, Aya found that his aching, cramped muscles were starting to warm up and move more easily. He had to be cautious about jarring the wounds on his back, and it was still incredibly painful, but he found he could move a little faster and without so much conscious effort. Unable to stand the cotton-mouth taste any longer, he stopped off in the bathroom long enough to brush his teeth, and then tottered down the stairs toward the flower shop.

He took the stairs slowly, one at a time, sliding his hand along the wall for support as he descended into the shop's back room. He didn't have any idea what time it was, but he had half-way expected to encounter one of his house mates. When he finally reached his destination, he realized he was alone, and he hadn't heard anyone else moving around in the apartment. He hadn't noticed if Ken's and Omi's doors had been closed, but he stared at the shop clock, which had been half-way pulled out of the wall and was hanging from a gaping hole by only a few wires, until the numbers came into focus. If the clock was still keeping time, it was barely eight in the morning, which would explain his housemates' absence, considering that both Ken and Yohji were worn out, and Omi was sick.

Aya crossed the room to stand in the doorway separating it from the front of the shop. He held onto the side of the door jamb for support, and surveyed the damage around him. The wreckage from his fight with Schuldich was still very evident, both in the front room and in the back, and Aya took that to mean he must not have been asleep for very long. Of course, he could be wrong. It could just mean that Yohji and Ken, the only two who were really capable of cleaning up at the moment, had just decided they didn't want to do it; those two always had been the messiest of the four assassins. Leaving them together to clean up a mess like this was almost like asking a robber to guard your safe; it was a pretty sure bet they wouldn't be able to overcome their inherent natures enough to do the "right" thing.

Aya shook his head, and, muttering under his breath about the mess, crossed back to the stairwell leading from their apartment into the back room. He knew he should work on cleaning up, even if he didn't feel like it. This was his mess, his fault, after all. There really wasn't any reason for Yohji or Ken to get stuck doing it. But, first, he had to call Manx. He knew Yohji well enough to conclude the tall blonde had probably decided against involving Manx, Persia, or Kritiker. For one thing, Yohji wouldn't want to tell them about this until he was certain of what had happened; for another thing, the older man's first instinct would have been to protect their team, and, especially, him, from the prying and questioning that Persia and Manx would do on Kritiker's behalf.

Aya wanted to protect the rest of the team, too, which was why he had to be the one to make the call that would inform their handlers of Schuldich's attack. He knew how the German had gained access to the shop so easily. There wasn't any evidence to support it, but he knew; it had to have been Hank. Hank had either given the security code to Schuldich or let him into the shop, and Hank had locked Bubba in his room to keep the dog from attacking the German. There was no other explanation. Other than the four of them and Hank, no one else knew the security codes that allowed access to the back rooms of the shop and the apartment where Weiss lived. Manx and Persia didn't know them; he had insisted upon that, in order to maintain some semblance of privacy in their home. Aya also knew Omi guarded the security codes with his life; the boy wouldn't have ever told them to anyone without okaying it with him first, so Aya knew no one within Kritiker could have gotten them. But, he had told Omi to give them to Hank, so that, as their employee, he could open up the shop if none of them were available to work the early shift. Besides, he had trusted Hank, and the man had gotten into the habit of coming and going as he pleased, almost as if he also lived there.

As much as he wanted to hate Hank for his betrayal, Aya found he just couldn't do it. He was angry. Hank had endangered the others by allowing Schuldich into the shop. He briefly toyed with the idea that Hank had been a Schwartz spy all along, but he quickly dismissed that notion. He just didn't believe it. He knew he was a very good judge of character, and he really thought he would have smelled it if the other man worked for Schwartz. If he hadn't realized it, the others surely would have. They hadn't managed to survive as assassins for this long without honing their instincts and learning to trust their feelings, no matter what. He also knew Hank didn't have any idea that they, four unassuming florists, were really assassins working for a secret organization. He thought the other man suspected they weren't really florists, but he figured Hank believed they were drug dealers or something mundane, like that. Consequently, he thought Hank didn't have a clue as to Schuldich's identity, and didn't know anything about Schwartz and its relationship with Weiss. His gut instinct told him, if the man had known exactly what they were involved in, what they really did for a living, and who Schuldich was, he wouldn't have helped the German, no matter what.

Despite the betrayal, Aya found he still trusted his own instincts and, deep down, he still trusted Hank. He believed Hank wouldn't have betrayed him unless he had a really good reason, and, although he couldn't prove it, he had a strong suspicion as to what the reason was. He remembered Hank coming to him a few days ago with news that his daughter had disappeared. At the Texan's request, he had searched for the little girl until he had completely exhausted all possible leads. He knew Yohji had looked, too, but without any success. It had been as if Hank's daughter had fallen off the face of the earth. When Aya put that information together with Hank's actions, he concluded Schuldich probably had the man's daughter.

Suddenly, another memory floated to the surface of his mind, confirming his suspicions: the German laughing crazily as he showed Aya a picture of Keiko, and Schuldich's smooth, purring voice in his head, telling him they had the girl.

"It's a good reason," Aya muttered as he stared at the muddy floor near his feet. "I just I just can't hold it against him." He thought about Aya, and muttered, "If it was for her, I'd probably do the same thing. Still, good reason or not, it really doesn't matter now."

Aya sighed and decided he couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. He had to call Manx before something happened to take things out of his control. This way, at least he could try to contain the situation; if he was lucky, he could limit the collateral damage to himself. They hadn't ever told Manx about Hank working with them in the shop, and, if Manx didn't know, then, of course, Persia and Kritiker didn't know. Aya knew Manx, for some reason, had a soft spot for Weiss. She viewed them as "her" team, probably because she was their only real contact for missions and information. Because of that, Manx might show compassion and let him live, but she wasn't the only one he had to deal with. Persia and Kritiker had to be involved, too, and they didn't know the meaning of the words "mercy" and "compassion". True, he had long held standing as Persia's "pet assassin", but even that wouldn't protect him now. Persia wouldn't have any choice in the matter; he wouldn't be able to allow such a big security breach to go unpunished. And, when you were part of Kritiker, punishment was always extreme.

Aya spotted a phone cord buried under some mud near his feet. He leaned forward with a groan and pulled it out of the muck, following it until he located the cordless phone base to which it was attached. The base was hidden under a pile of broken pottery and crushed pot plants. He retrieved it and punched the "page" button, praying that the handset batteries weren't dead. If they were, he'd never find the rest of the phone. Luckily, he was rewarded with a soft ringing sound, and he followed it until he finally found the handset inside a cracked vase in one of the coolers. It was soaking wet, but Aya shook it out and clicked at the "talk" button until he finally heard a staticky dial tone.

'I never thought it would all end like this,' he thought as he slowly punched in the number for Manx's cell phone.

****


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER 8**

Ken grumbled, running fingers through messy hair as he stumbled out of his room and down the stairs. As he slowly made his way down the hallway, struggling to collect his thoughts, he paused to look into the other rooms. As expected, Aya's room was still empty, since the redhead was recuperating in Yohji's room. He paused briefly at Omi's open doorway and smiled when he saw the youngest Weiss assassin, sprawled sideways on the bed, sound asleep. He remembered Yohji mentioning the boy was sick with the flu, and he was relieved to at least see that Omi seemed to be resting well. A little further down the hall, he paused at Yohji's door, which was only slightly ajar. Ken didn't want to disturb Yohji, Aya, or, even worse, Bubba, so he didn't push the door open any farther. Instead, he peeked in through the small crack, which only allowed him a view of part of the room. He could see Yohji, sleeping in the chair pulled next to the bed. He smiled and continued down the hall toward the stairs.

Ken tripped and stumbled halfway down the stairs before he caught his balance and managed to take the remaining steps two at a time. He paused in their kitchen, on the second level, long enough to grab a soda from the refrigerator, before continuing down the stairs. Once he reached the bottom step, he froze, his heart beating wildly against his ribs. He could hear noises coming from the front of the shop. He strained to hear the soft sounds as he silently debated over going back upstairs to retrieve his weapons. He didn't want to admit it, but Schuldich's attack on Aya had really frazzled his nerves. They had dangerous occupations; that was something they had all had to learn to live with, but they had all come to think of the shop and their apartment as a haven. The fact that their German enemy had been able to penetrate it so easily had shattered that notion and sense of security for all of them.

After listening for a few minutes, Ken decided he wasn't hearing the sounds of a struggle in progress, and it was probably safe to move forward without his weapons. He quietly moved away from the stairs and across the back room to stand in the doorway separating it from the front of the store, stopping short in surprise when he saw Aya.

The redhead was slowly moving around the front room, using a broom to push pieces of broken glass and pottery into little piles. Ken checked his watch, frowning as he realized it was barely eight thirty in the morning. He hadn't expected to find any of his housemates up and moving about, especially Aya. The redhead had been asleep for almost two days, thanks to Yohji's liberal use of the painkillers Aya's emergency room doctor had prescribed. It looked like all the rest had helped, though. Although he was moving slowly and stiffly, he was moving; considering how badly Aya had been hurt, that fact alone was a minor miracle.

Ken cleared his throat softly to alert Aya to his presence as he stepped into the room. Aya had his back to the inner doorway, and he jumped slightly and stiffened involuntarily at the small sound. He turned around slowly, his body tensed to fight or run, if necessary, but he relaxed when he realized it was only Ken.

"Hey," Ken said, smiling, as he walked into the room.

As he crossed the floor, he grabbed a large trashcan and dragged it into the middle of the room. Once he reached Aya, he crouched down to retrieve glass and pottery shards from the redhead's nearest pile. He tossed them into the trashcan, briefly glancing up at Aya before he reached for the next pile of debris. The redhead was staring at him --- not **at** him, really. It was more like Aya was staring **through** him. The vacant, slightly confused look in Aya's eyes gave Ken an uncomfortable, edgy feeling.

"Everything OK?" Ken asked.

He tried to keep the worry out of his voice, but he knew he had probably failed miserably. It was no wonder; Aya had pretty much been out of it for at least a couple of months now. He hadn't ever really gotten along with Aya, as he had always found the redhead to be too highly strung and moody for his own personal tastes, but even he had been worried about the man. Aya just hadn't been the compulsive, organized, asshole that he had grown accustomed to, and Ken couldn't help but wish that things would get back to normal, as quickly as possible.

"Um yeah," Aya mumbled after a few moments. He shook his head slowly, as if he was trying to clear his mind, and continued, "I I'm still kind of struggling with the um the painkillers."

Ken nodded, ducking down to retrieve more debris. He continued to drop pottery and glass into the trash can as he spoke. "Well, yeah, that's understandable. You were hurt pretty bad. I'm surprised to even see you down here. You've pretty much been asleep for two days, you know."

The surprised look on Aya's face told Ken that the redhead didn't know.

"Huh," Aya replied. "No. No, I didn't know." He shrugged, wincing in pain as the stitches and cuts in his back tightened and pulled. "That damn Yohji." He sighed. "But, much as I hate to admit it, he was probably right. I'm waiting for someone to come by and pick me up, so I thought I'd at least do a little of the cleaning, while I was down here. It's my fault this place is such a mess, after all."

Ken almost dropped the trash he was holding when he heard Aya's last statement. It was completely unlike the Aya he had come to know, and he couldn't believe he had actually heard those words come out of the redhead's mouth. He stared, open-mouthed, at the other man.

Aya laughed softly, "Surprised you, right? You look like you swallowed a goldfish."

Now it was Ken's turn to laugh. "Yeah," he said, ducking his head to hide the embarrassed blush spreading across his face. "Yeah, I guess I just never expected to hear you say something like that." As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how they sounded, and he stammered, "I I didn't mean it like that"

Aya shook his head and turned away, muttering, "It's OK, even if you did mean it that way. I've come to realize in the last couple of months that I've allowed my motives and feelings to be somewhat misunderstood." He sighed in frustration. For a moment, it seemed like he had more to say, but he simply turned away and continued to silently sweep up piles of trash.

Ken worked quietly for several minutes. He felt like he should say something, but he was unsure of how he should proceed. Finally, he decided to just let the matter drop, and changed the subject, instead. "Hey, thanks for the soccer tickets, by the way. And, the ball and cleats, too."

"You're welcome for the tickets," Aya replied softly. "As for the rest, well, you really shouldn't thank me, considering my stupid dog ate them in the first place."

Ken shrugged, "It was still a great gift, and damn nice of you, too. You know, the first game on those season tickets is this Friday. You want to go?"

Aya stopped sweeping and stared at the ex-goalie. He seemed surprised that Ken would invite him to the game, and he said, softly, "Don't feel like you have to invite me, just because I bought the tickets. They were from all of us. It's not often we get to do things that are truly fun, that we truly love. You should invite someone you actually enjoy spending time with. Life's too short, otherwise."

Just as Ken was about to respond, the telephone rang, cutting his words off before they left his mouth. He watched as Aya slowly crossed the room to pick up the phone off the counter. The redhead didn't speak; he only listened for a few seconds, and then hung up the phone.

"It's not like that," Ken said, after Aya hung up. "I didn't I didn't invite you because I felt like I **had** to. I wanted to. It'd be fun. You are allowed to have fun, right?"

Aya smiled, one of the few genuine smiles Ken had seen cross the silent redhead's face. "Thanks," he said. He pulled off his apron and handed it, along with his broom, to Ken as he moved toward the front door. As he pushed the metal doors covering the storefront upward, wincing in pain, he said, "It means a lot, that you would invite me. Unfortunately, I I don't think I'll be able to make it."

"Why?" Ken asked, suddenly angry. He felt insulted and embarrassed at extending a tentative offer of friendship, only to have it thrown back in his face, and he found himself thinking he had been right all along. Aya really was just a moody prick, no matter what Yohji said to the contrary. He stood and jabbed the straw end of the broom against the floor, creating a small splash, as he said, angrily, "What the fuck you gotta do, anyhow? Big plans or something?"

Aya didn't meet Ken's eyes as he replied, in a barely audible voice, "Yeah. Something like that. I'm sorry, Ken. I really am. Look, I I have to go. My ride's here."

He ducked under the half-open metal door, exiting the shop without even a backward glance. Ken crossed the room in time to see Aya stop on the sidewalk to talk briefly with two men wearing dark suits and sunglasses. After a moment, the two strange men pushed the redhead into the back seat of a large, black, four-door sedan. They got into the back with him, one entering on Aya's side, and the other sitting behind the driver. The sedan drove off into the deserted city street, and Ken lost sight of it as it turned a corner. The ex-goalie frowned. Something about that whole scene made him distinctly uncomfortable. It had looked like Aya knew the two men, and, the redhead had said that he was expecting them. But, he had looked uneasy and nervous, and the men had practically forced him into the car. On an impulse, Ken crossed the room and picked up the phone. He scrolled through the caller ID entries until he reached the latest call, and he frowned when he didn't recognize the number. On an impulse, the ex-goalie hit the "redial" button. As the phone dialed, Ken watched the numbers flash across the handset's display window, and, when the number finally came into view, he felt a surge of panic. He hung up the telephone before it could finalize the connection, and sprinted across the room toward the stairs. He was so panicked that his heart seemed to pound against his ribcage, and the blood seemed to rush through his ears in a loud roar.

"Shit," he snapped as he dashed up the stairs, taking the steps two, and, sometimes, three at a time. "That was Manx's cell number. Aya must have called her. What the fuck was he thinking?"

****


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER 9**

"Fuck!" Yohji snapped.

He slammed the phone handset down and sighed irritably as he checked his watch. 11:30 A.M. --- almost three hours since Ken had seen Aya disappear into that black sedan with the two Kritiker agents. He ran his hand through his messy, tangled hair and struggled to come fully awake. After seeing Aya leave, Ken had immediately burst into his room screaming that the redhead was gone. After he had gotten the ex-goalie calmed down enough to explain what had happened, Yohji had stumbled downstairs, falling about half-way in his sleep-fogged stupor, and immediately punched in Manx's cell phone number. Unfortunately, the red-haired Kritiker agent hadn't seen fit to answer the call. Manx's conspicuous absence and her silent treatment left Yohji with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. But, for now, he couldn't do anything else. Yohji sighed in frustration and, for about the hundredth time that morning, dialed in Manx's cell.

"Any luck?" Ken asked as he came into the kitchen.

Yohji clicked the handset off and held it against his forehead, trying to contain his anger, frustration, and fear. Failing, he turned, and, with one smooth motion, threw it against the opposite wall with enough force to shatter it. Bubba had been lying under the table, silently watching Yohji, and the big dog jerked in surprise and growled at the loud noise the handset made as it broke.

"That fucking bitch," he hissed through clenched teeth.

His voice had the cold, dangerous tone it normally took on while they were in the middle of a kill. Ken inched slowly into the room, giving the older man a wide berth, and stooped to pick up the broken phone. When he looked up, he saw that Yohji's hands were shaking with rage, and the tall blonde's eyes were glittering with a level of anger and hatred Ken had rarely seen. The ex-goalie couldn't ever remember seeing his older teammate this upset, except for his encounter with Hank after Aya had returned from the emergency room. Yohji was the one member of their team who never seemed to take anything seriously. Ken had seen the tall blonde joke his way through every kind of personal and professional crisis imaginable, from dates with various women, to disputes with his teammates, to unexpected and dangerous accidents during missions. Now, though, he could see almost uncontrolled rage and, maybe, even fear, on Yohji's face, and it scared him more than he would have cared to admit. Ken was no dummy. He could put two and two together just as well as the next guy, and, right now, it was all adding up to indicate Aya was in serious trouble.

Although Yohji hadn't openly shared his theories about how Schuldich had managed to breach their security so easily, Ken's deductive reasoning had led him to believe Hank had probably had something to do with it. If that was the case, it meant Aya had, most likely, called Manx to take the blame for the security breach, and, if that was true, it meant their chances of seeing the redhead alive again were growing slimmer with each passing moment Aya remained absent. If they didn't get Aya back, Ken figured it would push Yohji over the edge completely. Yohji was closer to Aya than anyone else in Weiss, and his overprotective streak and fondness for the quiet man were well known to the rest of the team. The truth was, though, no matter what he personally thought about Aya, Ken knew the redhead was the one who kept Weiss together and motivated them to work as a seamless, effective team; he was their leader.

'No,' Ken thought as he watched Yohji, 'we just have to get him back. If something happens to him, it won't just be the end of Yohji. It'll be the end of Weiss.'

"That fucking bitch," Yohji snapped again. He sighed and sank heavily into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. He leaned his elbows on the table top and rested his hands in his cupped palms. Bubba whined and moved forward to rest his head in Yohji's lap, just as Ken had often seen the dog do with Aya.

"She she isn't answering my calls," Yohji continued as he absently reached down to scratch behind the big dog's ears.

Suddenly, Yohji realized how exhausted he was; it felt as if someone had just flipped a switch that would turn him off. He looked up as Ken moved to sit down across the table from him. The chair made a wooden squeaking sound as it slid across the floor. He struggled to keep his voice from shaking, but he knew Ken could read the fear in his tone as easily as if he was reading an open book. "Ken, this is bad. I I'm scared. I don't know what to do. I don't think I've ever been this afraid before, and I don't I don't know what to do."

Ken stared at Yohji. It was obvious the tall blonde was at the end of his rope, mentally and physically. Yohji looked like he hadn't slept in a week, and he looked much older than his twenty-two years --- a young old man who had run out of options. As the older man again sighed in frustration and ran his fingers through his hair, Ken leaned forward to place a companionable hand on his arm.

He tried to smile reassuringly as he said, "It'll be OK. I just know it. Aya Aya is one tough bastard. It takes a lot to take him out, right?" Ken jumped involuntarily as he felt a large, square head slide into his lap, and he looked down into Bubba's small, deep-set, yellow eyes. Instead of the hateful, malevolent expression the dog normally wore, Bubba looked almost sad. "What the hell's wrong with this dog?" Ken asked, never taking his eyes off of the beast. "I think I liked it better when he was trying to kill all of us. This just makes me nervous."

Yohji stared at Ken for several moments before he sighed and said, shrugging "I don't know. Damn dog's been that way ever since Aya left. He just keeps following me around, whining, and looking all sad and pathetic like that. I think he misses Aya. I have to admit, though, I liked the evil Bubba better, too; somehow, it seemed more normal."

He ran his fingers through his hair again, shaking out his loose ponytail and refastening the elastic hair tie before he stood and stretched. "Yeah yeah. Aya's one tough bastard one lucky bastard, too. I guess we'll just have to hope that his luck holds out. But, I can promise this if anything and I mean anything happens to him, I'm going to kill that fucking bitch and then, I'm going to go after Persia." Ken stared at him, dumfounded, which prompted Yohji to say, "I mean it. I'm going upstairs to pace around and chain smoke in my room. If Manx calls, you'd better come get me, if you know what's good for you. And, if Aya does come home, let me know."

Ken nodded dumbly and watched as Yohji retreated to his room.

****


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER 10**

Aya squirmed around in an attempt to find a more comfortable position on the cold, hard, metal chair on which he was currently seated. He heard voices outside the room, and he turned toward the door, as if he expected Manx or, even, Persia, to walk in at any moment. His Kritiker "escorts" had brought him directly to Persia's secret base of operations. They had deposited him in this room almost immediately upon arrival, and he had been waiting here ever since --- almost four hours.

When it appeared no one was going to enter, Aya sighed and leaned his head backward, over the back of his chair, to stare at the ceiling. The entire room was white --- walls, floor, and ceiling --- everything, in fact, except for the most uncomfortable, gray, metal chair in the universe. There was only one door, no windows, and a single light fixture directly above him, which beat down on him with a hot, harsh light.

He squirmed around in the chair again, wincing as the cold metal bit into the still-fresh cuts on his back and made his bones ache. The whole damn room was ice cold, and Aya wondered absently why the hell Persia would want to run air conditioning in the middle of winter. He shivered slightly, causing the metal chain on the handcuffs that bound his hands behind his back to clink. The small sound seemed to boom out in the eerily silent room, prompting Aya to stop shifting around and resign himself to the fact that he wouldn't ever find a comfortable position on the chair. Freezing his ass off and bearing the pain his wounds would give him from sitting in one position for too long was preferable to listening to the chains clink, which sounded almost like the gates of doom slamming shut on him.

Aya sighed again and leaned forward to stretch the cramped muscles in his neck. He knew that he would have to offer some sort of explanation for Schuldich's breach of their security at the flower shop. Manx had been icily angry when he had called her to tell her about the German's attack, but, from the surprise in her voice and her demand for an explanation, he had been able to deduce she didn't know about Hank working for them. Aya had been wracking his brain for the last four hours, trying to figure out what he would tell her, when she finally did decide to make an appearance, but, so far, he really hadn't been able to think of anything, which, he had to admit to himself, was pretty damn pathetic for the cold, calculating leader of Kritiker's top assassin group. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn't going to tell her about Hank. Aya knew, in his heart, Hank had given Schuldich access to the shop's back door. No matter how many times he had thought it through, he continued to come to that inescapable conclusion, no matter how badly he wanted it not to be true. But, he knew Hank had a very good reason for doing what he had done. At least, that's what he thought. At any rate, he had decided to believe in his friend, and, if he told Kritiker about Hank, they would immediately hunt him down and eliminate him. Aya just wasn't willing to resign Hank to that fate, at least not without knowing for sure why he had supplied Schuldich with information. If, as he suspected and as Schuldich had told him, Hank's betrayal was connected with his daughter's disappearance, he had to protect the man from Kritiker, and he had to stay alive, too, if there was any hope of getting the little girl back in one piece.

Although Manx's attitude had indicated otherwise, Aya had hoped he would be able, somehow, to talk his way out of this mess. He had already been on thin ice with Persia and Kritiker before this latest snafu. Although the other guys hadn't been aware of it, Manx had spoken to him on several occasions since his last mission. At first, she had only wanted to know what had gone wrong --- why he had undertaken the mission alone instead of waiting for his back up, as planned. Aya hadn't ever told her about Yohji's no-show. Instead, he had reported that he had jumped the gun and gone in early, before Yohji could arrive. When he had remained on the inactive list for so long, Manx had called at least once a day to express Persia's displeasure at his slow recovery. In the last couple of weeks, she had finally told him, flat-out, that Kritiker felt he was losing his edge, and that the organization and Persia were thinking about "retiring" him from Weiss. Aya wasn't anybody's fool. He knew that no one ever "retired" from Weiss; the only "retirement" plan Kritiker offered was a bullet in the head and an unmarked grave.

Still, he had been one of Persia's and Manx's favorites for a long time. He had effectively led Weiss and made it one of the most effective, if not the most effective, assassin team Kritiker ran, and he had hoped his past record might have been enough to convince Persia, Manx, and Kritiker to cut him some slack this time. But, his treatment since being picked up at the flower shop this morning plainly told him his luck had finally run out. First of all, Manx sent two of Persia's private guards to pick him up, instead of coming herself, and they had driven him here without even speaking to him once, other than to tell him to get into the car. Then, upon arriving here, he had been escorted to this room, and had waited here ever since without so much as a word from Manx or Persia. Plus, the handcuffs were pretty much a dead giveaway that nothing nice was going to happen to him. At first, he had been glad for the delay, thinking that it would give him time to come up with a plausible story so he could satisfy Manx without having to forfeit his life. But, four hours later and still no good story, he was starting to wish Manx would just come in and get the whole damn thing over with. At least he wouldn't have to sit in this freezing cold room or on this damn uncomfortable chair any more.

Even though he had had hours to prepare for it, Aya still jumped involuntarily when he heard the door open. He continued to stare at the floor as he listened to a woman's high heels click softly across the tile, until, finally, Manx's red shoes came into view. He followed the long curve of her leg upward, over the short, red skirt of her suit, the curve of her hip, and her red jacket, until his gaze landed on her face, which wore a decidedly unhappy expression.

"So?" Manx frowned at him. "You have anything to offer? Any explanation?"

Aya looked briefly into her eyes and then away, down at the floor again, shrugging.

'Nice,' he thought to himself, 'four hours to sit here and think about it, and all I can come up with is a shrug. Way to go, Ran.'

Manx sighed and knelt down in front of Aya. She leaned forward slightly so that she could look into his face, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Ran," she said, softly, "I can't help you out of this, no matter how much I want to. That unplanned solo mission a few months ago, your being on the injured list all this time, and, now, this attack in Weiss' home base by a member of Schwartz. Persia isn't happy with your performance, and neither is Kritiker. They feel that you've lost your edge and your usefulness. Weiss is an assassin group, Ran a working assassin group. It can't function properly if it's one member down. You're the leader. They've been killing themselves --- running themselves ragged, all because you don't want to go back on active duty. Don't you think they deserve better than this from you?"

She waited, as if she expected him to answer her, and the air in the room was tense with the heavy feeling of anticipation. Still, Aya said nothing, and he slid his eyes away from hers, avoiding her gaze by staring at the floor directly at his feet. Manx had always been kind to him, and he would have liked to explain everything to her, to tell her that it wasn't his choice to remain on inactive, that he wasn't trying to shirk his duty regarding the team, and that he wasn't at fault for the solo mission or the Schwarz attack. But, in the end, he knew it wouldn't do any good. Persia had already made up his mind about the situation, and nothing he could say or do would change that. Explanations and excuses, as always, would be a waste of breath, which seemed a shame, considering he probably had so few left. Besides, Manx wasn't saying anything he didn't already feel. He had been watching his team run around in circles to the point of exhaustion for two months now, as they tried to keep up with Persia's demands, and he blamed himself for all of it.

After what seemed like an eternity, Manx finally sighed and leaned forward again, taking his chin in her hand to raise his head so that he was forced to look her in the eye. Aya tried to jerk his head away from her touch, but, with his hands cuffed behind the chair, he lacked the leverage needed to free himself. After a short struggle, he gave up and simply sat still, glaring steadily at Manx.

She sighed again. "Ran, please. Your only hope now is to be honest with us. If you give us the information we need, maybe Persia will go easy on you. He wants to retire you. Is that what you want?"

Aya shrugged again and finally succeeded in freeing his chin from Manx's grasp. He stared down at the floor between his feet and remained silent. Manx, nearing the end of her patience, growled in frustration, and grabbed Aya's hair. She roughly jerked his head up and backward, until he was looking at the ceiling. She leaned over him, so that her face was the only thing looming in his vision.

"Look," she snapped. "I'm trying to help you, you little shit, but you're making it damn impossible. We have information indicating you allowed someone into the shop, as an employee, and we think that's how Schwartz gained access to Weiss' base. If you tell us this man's name and where we can find him, Persia will let you off this time. But, that's the only deal he was willing to make. You're a talented assassin, Ran, but Persia can make a hundred more where you came from. All he wants from you now is this information. Otherwise, he has no more use for you."

Aya hissed in pain as she pulled his hair, but, otherwise, he gave no response.

Manx released his hair so that he could go back to staring at the floor. "Fine," she muttered as she crossed the room and pushed an intercom button. "Have it your way." She turned to leave the room just as the two men who had escorted him here from the flower shop entered, but she paused briefly at the doorway and said, her voice barely carrying across the cold, white room, "For what it's worth, Ran, I **am** sorry."

*****************************************************

Yohji sat in his darkened room, staring at the wall. He was slouched down and leaned back in his chair. His legs were stretched out in front of him, resting on the large, black dog lying at his feet. He almost looked as if he was simply enjoying some solitude; he certainly didn't look like a man who was brooding over dark, homicidal thoughts. He had given up pacing back and forth hours ago, about the time the sun went down. As he had stood in front of his window to watch the huge, red ball fall below the horizon, he had been overwhelmed with the sinking feeling he would never see Aya again, and, now, he found he could only sit and stare at the wall, overwhelmed by the fear and feelings of helplessness and despair he had been fighting against all day long. He glanced over at the clock next to his bed. It indicated that it was almost 11:30 P.M., which meant that Aya had been missing for over twelve hours, and they had yet to hear any word from either Manx or Persia, even though Yohji had placed hundreds of phone calls, and Omi had sent dozens of e-mails. It was clear their handlers were making the conscious decision to ignore them.

He glanced down at the small piece of note paper he still held clutched in his right hand. It was crumpled now, but he didn't really need to see the words written there; he had already read it so many times that he had committed it to memory. He had found it almost an hour ago, while he was still pacing nervously around the room. He had reached for his cigarettes, to calm his nerves, and, when he shook out one of the sticks, the note had fallen out along with it. He smiled slightly, in spite of his fear. How like Aya to put the note somewhere he would be sure to find it, and, as always, he was surprised at how well the younger man knew him. As he continued to stare straight ahead, he could still see the words from the note, as if they were written on the wall in front of him:

_"Yohji: I guess, if you've found this, something's happened to me. I know that's a pretty cheesy way to begin a note like this, but it's how they always do it in the movies and in books. At any rate, I suppose it means I might not be there to keep you out of trouble any more. I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused all of you guys, but, especially, you. I know you're not going to be happy over what I did, but I had to tell Manx, and I didn't want you all to be involved any more than you already were. It doesn't matter, anyhow. Persia and Kritiker have been after me for a couple of months, now, about my last mission, and about staying off-duty for so long. They've already decided to retire me, and it's just easier this way; if I can put it on myself, Persia will leave the rest of you alone. I know you've figured out Hank's involved in all this somehow, but, please, don't go after him. I know he wouldn't have done what he did, unless he had a good reason, and I think he already has more trouble than he can handle. It's a lot to ask, but, as a last favor to me, please just leave him alone. Try to stay out of trouble, Yohji. Don't take on Kritiker over whatever happens to me. It won't change anything, and it'll just get you killed. The other guys are going to need you around; we all count on you, you know. Could you take care of Bubba for me? You know where I keep the food and everything. Just watch out that he doesn't go after Ken's new soccer shoes or ball again. He's not a bad dog, really just misunderstood. Maybe that's why I liked him so much. Thanks for everything. Aya."_

Yohji sighed as he watched the words pass through his memory. He would never have guessed that Aya, who hardly ever spoke two words to anyone, was, in reality, so eloquent, so easily able to cut right through all the shit to the heart of everything with just a few written words. Yohji clenched his fist tighter around the note, and the paper made a soft, rustling sound as it squished down into an even smaller ball. He didn't like what he had read; he didn't like it at all. Aya's note indicated Kritiker and Persia had been pressuring and threatening him for a while, but the redhead hadn't ever mentioned it. Now, though, Yohji understood why Aya had consistently insisted he needed to return to active duty, even though it was obvious he wasn't well. The tall blonde sighed, and felt guilt sneaking over him as he realized that a large part of the trouble Aya was in now was his fault. He had been the one to blame for that unexpected solo mission that had landed Aya on the injured list; if it hadn't been for his no-show, the mission, a simple in-and-out job, probably would have gone off without even a hitch. Yet, Aya had, as always, taken the blame. It seemed the quiet redhead was always taking the blame for things that happened in the team or during missions, most of which weren't his fault in the least. It looked like Aya had also shouldered the blame for Schuldich's break-in and attack. He might have guessed Aya would, as was his habit, take the blame for recent events, but it wouldn't have ever occurred to him that Persia would even think of retiring him. Aya was Persia's pet assassin, the one man their handler had trusted to lead Weiss, and Aya had been the only person who had been able to turn the group around and make it into a cohesive, highly effective unit.

A soft sound from his doorway caused Yohji to turn around, and Bubba huffed companionably and lurched to his feet to trot to the door. He smiled when he saw Omi standing there, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot. The kid was obviously still sick. He was so pale he almost seemed to glow in the dim light from the hallway, and Yohji knew he was still running a fairly high fever. But, despite that, he had stayed on the computer all day, at first sending e-mails requesting a response from Manx, from Persia, or from anyone in Kritiker, and, then, when that failed, attempting to hack into Kritiker's systems to obtain any information about Aya. Yohji knew he'd been unsuccessful, but, still, Omi refused to give up. He had only left his post at the computer about ten minutes ago, and, then, only because Ken had forced him to. Yohji briefly debated over whether he should tell Omi about the note, but quickly decided against it. He could always tell Omi, and Ken, too, about it later, if Aya didn't come back. He knew Omi really looked up to Aya, and, right now, it was more important that the kid have some hope for the redhead's return. If Aya was truly gone, tomorrow would be soon enough for Omi to know about his farewell letter.

"Go to bed, Omi," Yohji called softly, "You're still sick, you know. You've already overdone it today, as it is."

Omi sniffled miserably and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve before he reached down to pet Bubba, who was now leaning against the boy's legs. The gesture seemed almost hesitant, as if Omi expected the big dog would change its mind and try to eat him at any second.

"Yeah, I know," he mumbled. His voice was hoarse and hard to understand, because his head was so stuffed up. He sneezed and continued, "I I just wanted to see if you were OK."

Yohji nodded. "Go to bed," he repeated.

"Ken went out to look you know in case he could find anything," Omi said, hesitantly.

Yohji knew Ken had gone out to search several of the places where Kritiker usually dumped the bodies of their targets. The four Weiss assassins had always jokingly referred to the locations as "the dumping grounds", but, now, with the possibility that Aya's body might be lying in one of them, the joke suddenly didn't seem very funny --- not that it had ever been all that funny, to start with. Instead of voicing all of these thoughts, though, Yohji just replied, "I know. Go to bed."

"OK," Omi said. "Just just be sure to let me know if you need anything, or if "

"Yeah," Yohji said, cutting Omi off in mid-sentence. "I know. If I hear anything, or if anything happens, I'll call you." Bubba whined and followed Omi a short distance out into the hallway. At first, Yohji thought the dog was going to bed down with the boy for the night, but Bubba returned after a few minutes. He whined and pushed his cold, wet nose into Yohji's hand, and the tall blonde couldn't help but feel slightly comforted by the gesture.

****


	11. Chapter 11

**CHAPTER 11**

Aya tripped and almost fell as he came up the steps leading to the kitchen's back door. He barely managed to stay on his feet by grabbing hold of the stair rail, but it cost him. He winced and struggled to catch his breath as he jerked to a stop and felt the wound in his side pull open and start to bleed. It had started raining again, a fine, cold drizzle, and the steps were slick. He fumbled with his keys for a few seconds, swearing under his breath as he struggled to force his cold-numbed fingers to work properly. Finally, when the key slid home into the lock and he heard the bolt click open, he sighed in relief.

He entered their shared kitchen, one floor above the shop and one floor below their sleeping quarters, and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. Aya slid slowly to the floor, thinking he would rest here for a few seconds before tackling the stairs leading up to his room. He leaned against the wall near the door, his back wedged into the little corner created where the wall met the door jamb. He knew he was being silly, but being wedged into the small space made him feel safe. Still, no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't linger here for very long. The flower shop and apartment would be the first place Kritiker's agents looked for him, and he didn't want to involve the other guys, if he didn't have to.

Aya leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Although it didn't feel that way right now, he knew he had been very lucky to manage to get away from the Kritiker agents assigned to execute him. He could still remember how his mind had raced from one possibility to another on the long ride from Persia's base to the dumping ground selected by Manx for his disposal, but, no matter how hard he had thought on it, he hadn't been able to figure a way out --- not considering that it would be a two-against-one fight, and he was unarmed, handcuffed, and injured. He thought now that he probably should have been flattered Persia felt he was enough of a threat to require two executioners, despite being unarmed and bound, but, at the time, he really hadn't felt that way. It had seemed, though, that the two Kritiker agents knew him and Weiss, if only by reputation. They had both been nervous and jumpy around him, as if they expected him to attack them at any moment, and that had caused them to hesitate a fraction of a second. It hadn't been much time, but it had been enough. Aya had managed to dodge the first shot, which had creased the side of his head. His vision had blacked out momentarily, but he had, somehow, managed to stay on his feet long enough to take out the first Kritiker agent. The second guy, though, had managed to get off a shot that was aimed well enough to hit him in the side, before Aya had managed to take him out. The wound burned and ached, and he had a sinking feeling the bullet was still in there, probably lodged against a rib; it was almost as if he could feel it there, burning away at his flesh. He didn't really remember what had happened after that, and he figured he must have blacked out. He had awakened in the vacant field to the unpleasant sensation of cold wetness working its way through his clothing to chill his skin. The two Kritiker agents weren't dead, but they were still out cold, so Aya had helped himself to their car, which he had driven in a fairly circuitous route around the city before finally returning to the flower shop, just in case anyone was following him. His head wound ached, probably compounded by the concussion he had suffered during Schuldich's attack, but he knew it wasn't that deep or that serious. The wound in his side, though, really worried him. It had already bled a lot. His t-shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket were all heavy with blood. He had managed to stop the bleeding, but his near tumble down the stairs had caused it to start again. He wasn't sure how much farther he could go with this kind of injury, but he knew he couldn't stop here for aid, even though the guys would help him without question. If he allowed Kritiker to catch him here, they would kill everyone in the team, and that was something Aya couldn't live with.

Even though he was feeling bruised, battered, and, over all, generally crappy, Aya decided he'd rested long enough. He pushed himself up into a standing position by bracing his hands against the wall next to him, grimacing in pain when he felt the hot sting of the bullet wound in his side. He stood there for a moment, swaying on his feet, as he willed the black clouds that seemed intent on gathering at the fringes of his vision to clear.

'Not now. I can't pass out now. Not here,' he thought as he walked unsteadily toward the stairs and pulled himself up them toward his room.

*******************************************************

Yohji rolled over and stretched as he struggled to come fully awake. His room was dimly illuminated by the light seeping in around his closed door from the hallway, and he stared at the ceiling over his bed, marveling at how it almost seemed to glow in the dim light, except for the long crack directly above him, which almost looked like a dark canyon or river snaking its way across the room. He couldn't even count the number of times he'd lain up here, unable to sleep after a night of killing, a night of drinking, or a night of sex, and imagined that the crack was a highway or a river that could take him somewhere else, where he could be free of this life that had been forced on him, free of this unending, vicious cycle he knew he'd never escape. Sighing, Yohji sat up in bed and ran the fingers of one hand through his hair as he grabbed up the clock off his bedside table with the other one.

The clock read 1:45 A.M. Yohji hissed in frustration and tossed the timepiece onto the foot of his bed. He had spent the entire day and most of the night pacing circles around his room, worrying over Aya. About thirty minutes ago, when there was still no sign of the redhead and no word from Manx despite repeated calls to her cell number, he had finally worn himself out and dropped into bed and into a fitful, restless sleep. He held his breath for a moment to listen for sounds indicating that anyone else was awake. He couldn't hear anything except the soft noises of a house sleeping. He figured that Omi, sick as he still was, had probably gone to sleep hours ago, and Ken was probably either asleep, too, or still out searching for Aya.

A scraping sound brought Yohji's attention toward the door. Bubba had been whiney and forlorn ever since Aya's departure the previous morning, and he had followed Yohji all day, never straying more than a few inches from the tall blonde's side. He had climbed onto the foot of Yohji's bed to sleep, but, now, the big dog was at the door, whining, scratching, and pushing against the wood until it creaked and groaned under his weight. Yohji got out of bed and cautiously made his way to the door. He walked carefully, so the old floorboards wouldn't creak under his weight. Something or someone was clearly upsetting Bubba, and Yohji didn't want to take any chances on alerting an intruder to his presence. He grabbed Bubba's collar and pulled the dog away from the door so that he could put his ear against it to listen. Yohji held his breath and strained to catch the smallest sound. After a few seconds, he heard muffled sounds from down the hall. It sounded like the soft thumping of someone wearing heavy boots walking around, followed by the squeaking sound of drawers sliding open and closed, and it sounded as if it was coming from Aya's room, at the end of the hall.

Yohji frowned and turned away from the door to fumble briefly with the various items littering the top of his chest-of-drawers. His fingers blindly felt their way through the lighters, packages of cigarettes, loose change, and small pieces of paper containing various women's phone numbers, until they finally found his watches. Yohji grinned, the small, evil, twisted, little smile he typically wore when out on a mission, as he strapped the weapons into place on his wrists. He wasn't going to be caught off-guard again, as he had been by Schuldich's attack. He used his leg and hip to roughly shove Bubba, who was whining and trying to get out of the door ahead of him, backward, and slipped out of the room. He pulled the door closed behind him to shut the dog in. It wasn't like he had any love lost for the stupid beast, but it was Aya's dog, and the redhead had specifically asked him to take care of the mutt.

Yohji moved quietly through the hallway, hugging the shadows along the wall. Behind him, he could hear Bubba whining and scratching at the door, but he ignored the sounds and continued to move forward, toward Aya's room. As he came closer, he could see the door was slightly ajar, but there wasn't any light coming from the room. The noises were a bit louder, though, confirming the tall blonde's initial suspicion that there was an intruder there. Yohji slid into position against the wall next to Aya's open door. From this vantage point, he could just manage to see a shadowy figure moving slowly about the room, opening and closing drawers and moving to and from the closet. It looked as if the person was placing items into a large duffel bag, but, in the darkness, Yohji couldn't see the intruder's face or tell who it was. Whoever it was, though, was going through Aya's things, and, considering how private the redhead was, that was something Yohji couldn't tolerate.

He frowned and, moving slowly and holding his breath so as to not alert his target, pushed the door open just a little more, to give himself room to attack. Yohji set his feet into an attack stance and launched his wires toward the intruder. They clicked out of his watches and flew through the air without any noise. Yohji's aim was true, and, before the intruder could dodge or react, the wires had encircled him, pinning his arms and legs. Yohji didn't want to take a chance on killing this guy before he was able to ask him a few questions; after all, he could be a Kritiker agent who could give them some information on Aya's whereabouts. Yohji gave the wires a savage jerk, smiling when the intruder toppled to the ground with a cry of pain, which was stifled when he hit his head on the corner of Aya's chest-of-drawers. The man landed heavily on his side and lay there without moving, obviously dazed from Yohji's attack and from hitting his head. Before the other man could regain his wits enough to fight back, Yohji darted in with an assassin's cat-like grace and, with a snarl, fisted his hands in the front of the other man's sweat shirt to haul him to his feet and toward the doorway, where the light from the hall would reveal his identity.

The other man hung, limp and unresisting, in his grasp, and Yohji slammed him against the wall near the doorway, as he snarled, "All right, you bastard. You're gonna tell me everything I want to know. If you do, then, just maybe, I'll kill you quick, instead of making you suffer." He gave the man a vicious shake and shoved him more toward the doorway, so that the hallway light fell across his face, revealing half-open, dazed blue-violet eyes and red hair.

"Oh, shit!" Yohji hissed, releasing his hold on the younger man. "Aya! I'm I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Are are you all right?"

As Aya began to slide down the wall, Yohji jumped forward to catch him. Aya's knees seemed to completely give out on him, and the tall blonde supported his weight and gently sat the redhead down on the floor, leaning against the wall. He knelt down in front of Aya and watched him worriedly. The redhead didn't say anything. He just sat quietly, slightly slumped forward and staring at the floor with dazed, out-of-focus eyes. Yohji released the wires from Aya's torso and legs, allowing them to fall to the floor around the younger man.

"Aya Aya, are you okay?" Yohji asked. He leaned forward to gently brush Aya's bangs out of his face.

That small gesture seemed to jolt the redhead out of his daze. Aya gave Yohji a half-hearted glare and swiped at the older man's hand, hissing in irritation. "Yo Yohji," he said slowly, "What what the hell are you doing?"

Yohji shrugged and sat back on his heels, watching Aya closely. "Sorry," he said, chuckling softly. "I thought you were an intruder." He paused and watched as Aya slowly made it back to his feet and returned to stuffing items into the large duffel bag he had dropped during the attack. The tall blonde frowned. Aya was moving too slowly and erratically. He couldn't tell in the darkened room, but he was sure that something was wrong with the redhead.

When Aya continued quietly packing without so much as turning to acknowledge his presence, Yohji cleared his throat and said, "Where have you been all day? I was worried shitless over you, and then you just come waltzing in without telling anyone like nothing at all is wrong? What happened, anyhow?"

He wasn't able to keep the irritation out of his voice. It seemed like the exhaustion from an entire day's worth of worrying had just slammed down right on top of him, and Yohji felt like someone had pulled the plug on him. He could almost feel the tiredness creeping in over him, and, now that he had seen Aya, now that he knew the redhead was alive, relief was quickly giving way to irritation and anger.

Aya paused in his packing to stare at Yohji for a moment with a blank, slightly unfocussed look. After a couple of seconds, he shrugged slightly and returned to rifling through his drawers and closet as he said, quietly, "Nothing. Nothing happened."

"Bullshit!" Yohji snapped. He struggled to keep his voice quiet. They had been lucky in avoiding awakening Omi so far, and Yohji didn't want to disturb the boy, or Ken, if the ex-goalie was even at home. He grabbed at Aya's shoulder and whirled the younger man around to face him as he hissed, "That's total bullshit, and you know it! We've been calling and e-mailing Manx and Persia all day for information on you, and nothing --- total shut down. Omi even tried hacking into Kritiker's systems. What the fuck happened?"

Aya lost his equilibrium when Yohji whirled him around, and he closed his eyes to catch his balance and swayed on his feet, dangerously close to falling. Yohji frowned and reached out quickly to steady him. His hand brushed against something sticky and wet at Aya's side, causing Yohji to pull it away as if it had been burned, and he looked at Aya in alarm. The redhead had gone almost ghostly white, and he seemed unable to get his balance or keep his feet under him. Yohji felt Aya sag heavily against him, and he propped the younger man up as he reached for the light switch.

"Stop," Aya said softly. He regained his balance enough to catch Yohji's hand and prevent him from turning on the light. "Stop. I I don't want to wake up Omi or Ken. I I don't have time for this, Yohji. I have to get out of here before they come."

"What are you talking about?" Yohji asked, fearful of the answer. Aya was acting downright squirrelly, and Yohji felt the little hairs on the back of his neck starting to stand up as he gently shook the younger man and said, "Dammit, Aya! Stop packing or whatever and talk to me! Who's coming? What happened?"

Aya sighed and leaned back against the wall to stare at the ceiling. He felt steady enough on his feet now that he didn't need Yohji's assistance, and he brushed the other man's hands off his shoulders as he replied, in a quiet, slightly shaking voice, "Kritiker. Things things didn't go well when I met with Manx today." He sighed and ran his hand over his face before continuing, "Things haven't been okay for a while, really. Since that mission a couple months ago the one where I got stuck out in the rain and then got sick "

Yohji nodded. "Yeah, I know," he replied, cutting Aya's story short. "I I found your note. It it scared the shit out of me. It sounded like you weren't planning on coming back."

"I ," Aya started, and then sighed in frustration, as if he was having trouble finding the right words to explain what had happened. Finally, he decided to just plunge ahead, and the hell with it if he sounded like an idiot. "I didn't think I would be back. I shouldn't be back, really. Persia Kritiker they decided, really a while back, that I wasn't of any use any longer. They have been making threats for a while threatening to "retire" me you know, if I didn't get my act together. The attack by Schuldich was just the last straw. I'm they think I'm too much of a security risk, so they decided to go through with their original plan. I got away." He paused for a moment and fumbled with something on his wrist. Only after hearing a metallic click followed by the hollow thunk of something falling to the floor between them did Yohji realize Aya was picking the lock on a set of handcuffs. As the tall blonde bent down to pick up the metal bracelets, Aya finished, "It wasn't easy, though. I've got to get out of here. I have to stay on the run long enough to straighten a few things out. Then, I can turn myself in to them to Kritiker. I didn't want to involve any of you any more than I already had, but I I needed a few things so that I could hide out for a while some clothes some food, and I have some money stashed here, too. But, I know they'll come here looking for me, and I need to be gone before they get here. Otherwise, they'll think you were hiding me, and they'll kill all of you, too. I can't I can't let that happen."

Yohji stared at Aya with an open mouth and a shocked expression in his eyes. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He knew he was often on thin ice with Persia and Kritiker because he was rather lazy and had a tendency to goof off or blow off missions, as he had done a few months ago with Aya, and also because he often changed mission plans at the last minute, without telling the rest of the team, which had, more than once, resulted in an almost-failed outing for the four assassins. But, the redhead had always been almost a model assassin, if such a thing existed. Aya always took every mission offered, without question, and he always succeeded in carrying out his orders. Since he had begun leading the group, Weiss' success rate had increased drastically, and their injury rate had dramatically decreased. It had always been obvious to the rest of the team that Aya was Kritiker's "golden boy", and Yohji knew the redhead had often used that position to shield the rest of them when things went wrong during missions, or the few times that they had failed. He couldn't believe Persia and Kritiker would turn their backs on Aya now, but that was definitely what the redhead was saying. To make matters worse, it almost sounded like Aya had acquiesced in their decision, or had resigned himself to the fate Kritiker had picked for him. Yohji knew they had all, long ago, figured out they didn't have any control over their lives, but, to hear Aya actually voice it out loud almost broke Yohji's heart. None of them were free, by any stretch of the imagination, but Aya had always seemed so confident and so in control. For some reason, he couldn't stand the feeling that the redhead had broken, that he'd finally given in and put himself completely at Kritiker's mercy.

He stepped forward slightly and put his hands on Aya's shoulders, forcefully pulling the redhead from his packing. He forced Aya to turn around, so that they were eye-to-eye. "What what the hell are you saying?" he asked. His voice was getting louder, and he softened it when Aya gestured with his hand and shot a panicked look toward the door. He didn't want to wake up any other occupants of their house, either, if at all avoidable. "What are you saying?" he asked again, in more of a hissed whisper this time. "Why? Why would they "retire" you? You haven't done anything wrong. That last mission, and all the stuff after none of that was your fault. If anything, I was the one who"

"Stop it," Aya stated flatly. "What are you going to do? Go to Persia and tell him that you were the one who fucked up that last mission? That I had to go alone because you decided not to show up?"

'All right,' Yohji thought, 'that stung, but not entirely undeserved.' He cleared his throat and replied, "Well, yeah maybe. Why not? It was my fault, after all."

Aya sighed, "It's it's not just that. It is, but, it's also the time before that, when the target got away and it took us two tries to take him out and the time before that, when Ken took a bullet in the leg, and we almost got caught by the police or the time before that, even, when we tripped the alarm when we were breaking into the target's office building, and we had to fight our way back out again." He sighed again, and shook his head, shrugging off Yohji's hands with a pained, narrow-eyed look. "It's it's a lot of things that all add up to me standing behind the eight ball." He started to turn back to packing his duffel bag, but Yohji stopped him again.

"Aya Aya, just just stop for a damn minute. Look none of those times; none of them were your fault. That last mission, where you got sick was my fault. The time before that was because I tripped an alarm and then Ken missed the extra guards when we did the first sweep of the building. The time before that, it was Omi who tripped the alarm while he was hacking into the security system. We wouldn't have even gotten out of there if it hadn't been for you hearing the extra guards coming and warning the rest of us. Kritiker knows that."

"They don't. As far as they're concerned, it's all my doing, all my fault, and that's the way I wanted it," Aya snapped. "Look at that time, as far as Kritiker and Persia were concerned, I was valuable too valuable, so they were willing to let things slide a lot of things, I guess. I don't know. I just they wouldn't have been so kindly disposed toward the rest of you. If if I had given them the information they wanted today, they'd have let me off, again, too." He was growing impatient and irritated with Yohji's constant questioning, and he jerked his arm angrily out of the tall blonde's grasp, wincing as he felt the wound in his side pull from the motion. "Yohji please. I I don't have time for this. Once they figure out those two agents are missing, this is the first place they'll come. I can't be here. Please." He looked at Yohji with pleading eyes, "Please."

"No," Yohji said, squeezing Aya's arm hard enough to make the redhead wince. He loosened his grip slightly, but didn't let Aya go, as he repeated, "No. Not until you tell me what the fuck is really going on. This isn't a joke, man. They say "retire", but you know that's a damn lie. What information? About Schuldich's attack?"

Aya dropped his eyes to the floor and said, in a soft voice, "Yeah." He sighed before continuing, "Yeah. About Schuldich. They they found out about Hank. Not about him, really. They don't know who he is or where he is, but they know someone's been working here at the shop. They don't really know, but they think he was the one who let Schuldich into the shop that day."

Yohji swallowed. "And what do you think? Do you think it was him?"

Aya paused, and, then, slowly, nodded. "Yeah," he said, quietly, "it was him. I know it was. No one else could have locked the dog up like that, and he was the only one besides you guys who knew the security codes. I don't want it to be true, but I know it was him. I know he he had a good reason. I know he did."

"Aya, stop it! Stop this shit now. It's gone too far. How how can you defend him like that?"

"It's it's not that easy," Aya said. His voice was barely audible, and he refused to look into Yohji's face.

"Like hell!" Yohji snapped, shaking Aya slightly. "It is for me. If it's a question of you or him, then it's him, no problem. Hell, I'll kill the fucker myself."

"And his daughter?" Aya asked. "What about her? Would you kill her, too an innocent child, who has nothing at all to do with Kritiker or Weiss or Schwarz? Nothing at all to do with me or Schuldich or you?"

"What what are you saying?" Yohji asked. He was starting to feel like a man desperately trying to play catch up, and failing miserably, and it was beginning to irritate the ever-loving shit out of him. He had always hated feeling dense, but it couldn't be helped. It was obvious Aya was already light years ahead of him in this particular game, but he was determined the redhead wasn't going to play it out alone.

"His daughter. Schwarz has his daughter. Schuldich told me; he told me the whole thing they forced him to give them information by threatening his little girl. Hank he he doesn't even know anything about Schwarz; he doesn't know why Schuldich wanted the information. He doesn't know anything about what we really do for a living. He was just trying to save his daughter."

"How do you know Schuldich wasn't lying?" Yohji asked.

Aya looked up in response to that question, his eyes giving Yohji a sarcastic, questioning look that clearly said, "Come on".

Yohji sighed, "Yeah I know. Stupid question."

Aya once again shrugged off Yohji's restraining grip, and turned back to his packing. "Please, Yohji", he begged, "please. I'm out of time."

"All right," Yohji replied. He stepped forward and grabbed the few items remaining on the floor, stuffing them into the duffel before securing it by pulling and tying off the drawstring at its top. He paused for a minute and watched as Aya struggled painfully into a heavy, olive-drab colored, canvas coat --- the same coat he had stolen from Hank the first time the two of them met. Somehow, Omi had performed a minor miracle and restored it to life. Once Aya was finished, Yohji continued, "Give me a minute to grab my shit and get that damn dog. There's no way in hell I'm letting you go alone." When Aya started to protest, he cut the redhead off before he could even get the words out by finishing, "Besides, that fucking dog is driving me crazy!"

****


	12. Chapter 12

**CHAPTER 12**

The night was still dark, although there were only a few hours left until dawn. As they stepped from the flower shop's back door into the pre-dawn chill, Yohji shivered and squinted up into the street light just above them. It had been a fair day, sunny with miles and miles of cloudless, blue sky, but, now, he could see a fine drizzle misting through the light's yellow glow. As he pulled the door closed behind him with a soft click, Yohji took the opportunity to steal a glance toward Aya.

When he had caught the younger man earlier, preventing him from falling, Yohji's hand had brushed against something sticky and wet; he would have sworn it felt just like drying blood. But, when he had returned to his own room to gather a few things and release Bubba from captivity, he had checked and found nothing on his hand. Yohji had tried to dismiss it as a simple mistake in a darkened room. Still, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling something was wrong with the redhead. His attempt at getting a close enough look at Aya to determine exactly what was the matter with the younger man was foiled, though, when Aya glared briefly at him and then moved quickly out of the circle of light and onto the darkened sidewalk, pulling his coat tighter around his body and its collar up to shield his face and ears from the cold, drizzling rain.

Yohji sighed and finished locking the door as he said, "So? Where to now?"

Aya didn't reply, not that Yohji had really expected him to. He had been around the redhead long enough to know better. Besides, as much as Aya had talked to him tonight, he almost expected the younger man might not say anything else for at least a year. He must have used up at least that much conversational energy. As Aya turned, without a word, and headed off into the darkness, away from the shop, Yohji sighed again and looked up at the sky, as if he was asking, "Why me?" Now that he was actually out here in the dark, and the cold, and the rain, coming with Aya didn't seem like the best idea he'd ever had, and Yohji thought fondly of his big, overstuffed, mattress and the down comforter covering his bed. In there, his life still wasn't his own, but at least he knew the rules; he killed on Kritiker's command, and they left him the hell alone. There had to be at least a small measure of safety in that --- in knowing the rules. Besides, it was warm and comfortable in there, and he could probably talk Ken into making pancakes for breakfast. The ex-goalie was pretty much a total and complete failure in the kitchen, but he could make the best damn pancakes.

Just when he had almost made up his mind to turn around and return to the warmth and safety of his own room, Yohji looked up and realized Aya had almost completely disappeared from view. He could barely make out the shape of the redhead's figure in the misty, pre-dawn blackness. Even if he hadn't been able to see the younger man, he would have known Aya was just ahead of him, because he could hear the metallic clinking of Bubba's collar and tags as the big dog jumped and nipped happily at Aya's fingers and the hem of his coat. The stupid dog had been so happy to see Aya that he had practically been running circles around the redhead ever since their reunion.

Yohji sighed and flipped his coat collar up, echoing Aya's previous gesture. "Stupid little shit," he muttered as he grabbed his duffel bag, swung it over his shoulder, and stepped off the security of the flower shop steps and into the great unknown. "And, I'm just as much of an idiot for following him." He sighed and broke into a jogging run, hoping to catch up to Aya before the younger man disappeared from view completely.

**************************************************************

They had been walking in silence for about five minutes, the nighttime quiet broken only by the clinking of Bubba's collar and tags and his excited little barks as the big dog scampered ahead of them, chasing at leaves and stray bits of paper that blew across his path, when Aya suddenly ducked into an alley. Yohji, who had been trailing slightly behind the redhead, followed him, and the blonde felt his curiosity quickly give way to fear and dread when he found Aya slumped against a pile of garbage cans near the alleyway entrance. It almost looked as if the redhead had collapsed there, lacking the strength to walk any further.

Aya was sitting with his back against a garbage can, his shoulders slumped forward, and he was staring at the ground. As Yohji paused in the alley's mouth to look at him, he had the uneasy feeling that Aya wasn't really seeing anything; it was almost as if he was staring through the ground, instead of at it. The redhead looked as if someone had just turned his power switch to "off", confirming Yohji's initial suspicion that something was terribly wrong with the younger man, although he still had no idea exactly what that was.

"Hey, Aya?" Yohji asked as he knelt down in front of his companion. When Aya didn't reply or give any indication he was even aware of Yohji's presence, the blonde leaned forward and ducked down to look into his friend's face. With a shaking hand, Yohji reached forward and gently brushed at the hair hanging over Aya's eyes as he repeated, in a soft voice, "Aya? You stopping here for the night or what? It's not very far from the shop don't you think we should, maybe, move on a little further? Kritiker is sure to search this area." He paused, waiting for some response, some sign Aya had heard him. When there was nothing, Yohji gripped the redhead's shoulder and shook him gently. "Ay Aya?" he asked in a shaking voice, "Aya? Are you OK? Aya? Aya, can you hear me? Please just just say something. You're starting to really scare me, man."

There was a sudden, loud, crashing sound to their right, as Bubba, who had been snuffling around in the alley's darker shadows, knocked over a garbage can. Yohji tensed at the sound and turned his attention away from Aya long enough to watch one of the cans, along with its lid, roll out of the shadows and past them out onto the sidewalk. He squinted into the shadows, and managed to just make out the big dog's shape. Bubba had moved on to the next can in the stack he was investigating, and he was on his hind legs, front paws thrown over the lip of the can, head buried in its contents. Yohji could see his stubby tail wagging as Bubba snuffled happily through the garbage, and he wrinkled his nose in distaste as he thought about how bad the dog was going to smell by the time they finally made it out of this alley. After several minutes, Bubba finally succeeded in overturning the second can, too, sending it rolling past the two Weiss assassins, and onto the sidewalk, as well, with a loud crash.

The second crash seemed to break Aya out of his daze somewhat. The redhead jumped, and then tried to get to his feet, only to come crashing heavily back to his seated position. Yohji just barely managed to catch him in time to keep Aya from hurting himself as he hit the ground. The blonde frowned over at the dog, which had moved on to yet another stack of cans. Yohji kept one hand on Aya, to keep the redhead from falling over, while he used the other hand to blindly feel the ground behind him. When he located one of the cans' lids, he gripped it and tossed it toward the dark end of the alley. He couldn't help smiling when he heard a solid thunk followed by a loud, surprised yelp as it connected with some part of the big, black dog. Within a few moments, Bubba loped over to them and flopped down at Aya's side, whining and licking at the redhead's hand.

Aya's fingers automatically reached out to fondle the big dog's soft, drooping ears, and he said, in a barely audible voice, "Yo Yohji. I I don't think I can go any farther. Just just leave me here and go back to the shop. Kritiker doesn't have to know about you leaving."

Yohji shook his head as he said, "Nope. Sorry. I'm in this for the long haul. Are you all right? What's wrong?"

With Yohji's help, Aya shifted slightly and scooted toward the circle of light cast by an overhead bulb outside one of the restaurants backing this particular alley. He pulled his coat aside to reveal a dark, red stain discoloring almost one whole side of his sweat shirt.

"Oh fuck me," Yohji whispered in a shaking voice as he reached out to tentatively brush his fingers against the stain.

It looked as if Aya's shirt had been discolored by blood that had dried, only to be covered by a new wave of the sticky, red liquid, which, at first glance indicated that the wound had bled heavily and was continuing to do so. Still, Yohji found himself holding his breath, hoping against hope that he was wrong, and that the wound wasn't bleeding any longer. Unfortunately, he was right. Yohji groaned mentally as his fingers brushed against warm, wet, stickiness.

Aya jumped and hissed in pain as the blonde's hand brushed against the wound, prompting Yohji to grip his shoulder to still him. "S sorry," the blonde murmured. "Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. Aya, what what happened?"

Aya leaned back against the garbage cans behind him and closed his eyes. He was ghostly pale, even for him, and, in the light cast from the overhead bulb, Yohji could see the fine pain lines around the redhead's mouth and eyes.

"Kritiker," Aya whispered. "I I told you it wasn't easy getting away, right?"

It took Yohji about five seconds to catch on to what Aya was saying. "They shot you? Is that what happened? The fuckers shot you?" He paused, but, when Aya nodded in response, he asked, "Where and how bad is it?"

Aya couldn't control the tremor in his voice, and Yohji had to lean forward just to hear the words as the redhead mumbled, "Side bad. Bullet I think the bullet is still in there. Hurts like hell. I just can't go any farther." He let out a low hiss as a wave of pain hit him, and, when Yohji looked away from the wound and to Aya's face, he was surprised and shocked to see tears shining from the redhead's eyes. "Yohji I I'm sorry," Aya gasped out, his voice finally breaking on a muffled sob. He took a shallow breath and continued, "I I never thought Shit. I never thought I'd die like this in a fucking pile of garbage. Guess it's no more than than I should expect, really. Probably probably more than I even deserve." As he gasped out the final few words, Aya finally lost his battle with unconsciousness, and he slumped forward into Yohji's arms.

Yohji caught Aya as he fell forward. He could still see tears shining on Aya's cheeks and seeping out of his closed eyes. He didn't know if Aya was crying from the stress of the past few months and the events of this day, from the pain of his injuries, or because of a feeling of sadness, sorrow, or regret. But, he did know that Aya, who had always seemed invincible, like some kind of superman, had finally broken. Yohji wasn't sure, but that fact might have been more upsetting than what the redhead had just said.

He felt tears stinging his own eyes as he shook his unconscious friend gently, hissing, "Aya! Aya, stop it!"

He fumbled briefly with Aya's wrist, searching for a pulse, and, when he didn't feel one, he grabbed at the redhead's throat in a panic. Yohji held his breath, praying that he would feel something, some sign of life, and he let the breath out with a long, low sigh of relief when he finally felt Aya's pulse. It was slow, but it was there, under his fingers, proof that Aya was still with him, that the redhead was still present in this world.

He gathered Aya closer to him in a gentle hug as he muttered, "It's not going to end like that. You are not going to fucking die here! You hear me, you little son-of-a-bitch. You are not leaving me like this." He rocked back and forth, his friend cradled in his arms and continued muttering, "You are not going to fucking die here. You are not going to fucking die here."

After a few moments, Yohji managed to recover from his initial shock, and he looked up to realize they weren't very far from Hank's apartment. He hadn't ever been there, but Ken and Omi had told him where Hank lived, and Yohji was certain it was only two or three blocks from their current location. He didn't trust Hank, especially now that he had betrayed Aya, and he didn't particularly share the redhead's belief that Hank didn't know anything about Weiss or Schwarz. As far as Yohji was concerned, the jury was still out on the question of whether or not Hank was a Schwarz operative. But, Aya needed help, now, and Yohji knew he couldn't do anything for him in this dark, rain-drenched alley. Besides, they both needed to get out of the rain and the cold, and he knew Kritiker didn't know anything about Hank --- Aya had confirmed that much during their earlier conversation --- which meant that the organization wouldn't ever look for them at Hank's apartment. Yohji didn't like it, but it seemed he didn't have any other choice. He would have to trust in Aya's judgment and believe that Hank wouldn't betray them further.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath as he staggered to his feet with Aya in his arms. "I hate I mean, I fucking hate making these kinds of decisions. Why do you always make me do this? When you wake up, I'm so gonna beat the ever-loving shit out of you, you little prick." Still muttering, he exited the alley and walked through the misty drizzle toward Hank's apartment. Bubba jogged and frisked along, running circles around Yohji and Aya, as if he didn't have a care in the world. Yohji glared at the animal and hissed, "Stupid dog."

****


	13. Chapter 13

**CHAPTER 13**

The sound of frantic, heavy pounding awakened Hank from an uneasy, restless sleep. He rolled over and reached for the clock that sat on the floor next to his futon. He fumbled briefly with it in the dark, but, after a few seconds, he succeeded in grabbing it. Muttering in irritation, he rolled back over onto his back and held the timepiece over his head, a few inches away from his eyes. At first glance, it appeared to read 4 A.M., but Hank thought that couldn't be right. He shook his head slightly and rubbed at his sleep-bleared eyes before again looking at the clock.

'Nope,' he thought, as he tossed the clock back over to the side of his futon, 'It really is fucking four in the A.M.' He placed his hand over his face, so that he could see a small sliver of ceiling through the space between his fingers. When the pounding started again, he sighed and grumbled under his breath, "What the fuck is with all the damn noise? Must be those damn kids that live down the hall. Third time this week." He sighed and rolled over so that he could get up and make his way to the kitchen area of his little one-bedroom apartment, stumbling over the shoes and clothing littering the floor. The pounding resumed as he neared the kitchenette, and Hank stopped to stare dumbly at the doorway, realizing, for the first time, that the noise was coming from his door.

When the pounding silenced and then resumed again, Hank finally managed to force his feet, which almost seemed to be glued to the floor, to carry him toward the door. He couldn't help but remember the last unexpected visitor he had had --- the red-haired German with the sneaky, evil smile and silky, deadly-soft voice who had forced him to betray Ran. He really didn't want a repeat of that visit, and he stopped inches away from the door to stare at it as if it was some kind of evil demon come from hell to devour him.

But, the incessant pounding continued, and, afraid whoever was at his door would wake up the rest of the tenants on this floor, Hank called out, with a shaking voice, "Who who is it?"

Hank didn't know whether he should be relieved or even more afraid when he heard Yohji's voice snap from the other side of the door, "It's me. Open up."

With shaking hands, Hank hesitantly opened the door a crack, just large enough to peer through. When he looked into it, he found himself face-to-face with Yohji. The tall blonde's ever-present sunglasses had slipped down low on his nose, and he glared at Hank over the tops of the lenses. Hank could see the other man's jade green eyes sparkling with anger and something closely resembling hatred, and he involuntarily took a step backward, swallowing hard as he did. As Hank backed away, shock and fear plainly written on his face, Yohji jammed his foot into the crack and nudged the door open slightly wider. His heavy, leather boot made a scraping noise as he slid it across the floor. Within seconds, a huge, square, black head shoved its way through the door, swinging it wide and causing it to slam loudly against the near wall as Bubba came trotting into the room and, with a satisfied grunt, settled himself comfortably in the middle of Hank's floor.

"Move out of the way and let us in," Yohji snapped, drawing Hank's attention from the big, black dog back toward the doorway.

Yohji turned sideways and shouldered his way into the apartment. Once he was inside, he paused for a few moments to glare at Hank before turning around to look around the apartment. Spotting the table in the kitchen area, he tilted his head in that direction and said, "Clear the shit off that table." He started back toward the doorway, and paused to look back at Hank, who was still standing next to Bubba, staring at him, and snapped, "Now!"

He retreated back to the hallway, and, with his back to the door, bent down to retrieve something he had left sitting in the shadows. When he returned, Hank realized, for the first time, Yohji wasn't alone. He held Aya in his arms, and the redhead was still and quiet, lying limply against the tall blonde's shoulder.

"Oh my G Ran. What happened? Yo Yohji, what what happened to Ran?" Hank stammered, shocked at the sight of Aya. The younger man was ghostly pale, soaking wet from the rain outside, and trembling. Hank couldn't even tell if he was breathing or not, and he stepped forward to gently brush at Aya's face. "R Ran?" he whispered. The redhead's skin was ice cold when he touched it. "Ran? Are are you all right?" He looked over Aya's limp body to Yohji and asked, "What what happened? What happened to him?"

"Didn't I tell you to move that shit off the table?" Yohji snapped. He glared at Hank once again, over the tops of his sunglasses, and his eyes were hard, cold, and deadly.

Hank found himself involuntarily stepping backward once again, in an effort to escape Yohji's cold, hateful presence. He had always, somehow, felt he should be wary of the tall blonde, even when Yohji acted friendly and faced him with a smile. He had sensed there was a lot more to the man than there seemed to be on the surface; it was the same way he felt with all of them. Somehow, he had always known they weren't what they appeared to be. When Yohji didn't move from his position just inside the doorway, but continued to glare daggers at him, Hank backed away toward the table.

"S sorry," he stammered, as he used both hands to sweep the items littering the table top to the floor. Apples, oranges, a few stray pieces of silverware, two tin plates, yesterday's paper, and several unwashed coffee cups made a loud noise as they clattered to the floor. Hank jumped at the sound, and turned back to Yohji as he said, "OK. Here. Table's clean."

Shoving him roughly aside, Yohji moved past him to drop Aya onto the table. Although he made an effort to deposit his burden gently, the redhead dropped through the air a couple of inches and hit his head roughly on the tabletop. Aya groaned at the impact, and Hank saw Yohji visibly wince.

The tall blonde leaned over his injured friend and gently stroked Aya's hair. "Shhh," he whispered, placing his forehead against Aya's, "Shhh. It's all right. You're all right."

Once Aya quieted, Yohji began the task of unbuttoning the olive colored coat the redhead was wearing. Hank recognized it as the coat Aya had stolen from him, and, with a smile, he remembered his first meeting with the quiet redhead. The happiness of that fond memory was quickly replaced by guilt when he also remembered how he had betrayed the younger man. He watched in silence as Yohji finished opening up the coat and stripped it off of Aya, gently lifting the redhead into a sitting position in the process, and he sucked in his breath sharply when he saw the ugly red stain discoloring the side of Aya's sweat shirt.

"What what happened?" he asked again, stepping toward the table. "Yohji, what the hell happened to him?"

Yohji turned and looked at him briefly, almost as if he had forgotten Hank was still in the room. The blonde had pulled his sunglasses off his face and tossed them onto one of the nearby counters, and Hank could see worry, exhaustion, and, even, a hint of rage in the other man's eyes. He had to admit that, of all his employers, he had always feared Yohji the most. The tall blonde always seemed jovial and easy-going, but Hank had had occasion to see another side of him. He had seen it months ago, in the alley, when Yohji had pulled him off of Aya and had almost cut his throat in the process, and he had seen it several days ago, when Yohji had attacked him in the flower shop, only to be stopped by Ken. Hank knew that, where Aya was concerned, Yohji was almost the definition of an over-protective older brother, and he knew the blonde wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who threatened the redhead, no questions asked, and no guilt afterward. Hank had the feeling none of the four men he had worked for should really be messed with; they all seemed dangerous, even Omi, although he was just a kid. Still, this overprotective quality, in his opinion, made Yohji the most dangerous of the four, since it effectively removed any moral barriers the tall blonde might otherwise have. Hank swallowed. He couldn't ever remember being this afraid, not even the first time he had met Yohji, and the blonde had held a knife to this throat, but he stood his ground and stared back at Yohji, hoping his fear didn't show through his eyes.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Yohji said, by way of answer to his question, "Water. Boil some now."

Hank stared at the blonde for a few seconds, but, when Yohji turned back toward Aya, he decided he wasn't going to get any answers, at least not right then. Considering the blonde's unstable and angry temper at the moment, Hank decided the safest course of action would be to do as the other man instructed. Without another word, he moved toward the sink to fill a kettle with water. He turned the stove burner to its highest setting and left the kettle there to boil, and then turned back to watch Yohji.

Aya was too tall to fit completely on the table, so his legs dangled over one edge. Yohji bent to lift first one leg and then the other, so that he could pull off the heavy boots the redhead wore. Then, he bent down and fumbled in his own boot for a moment, until he pulled out the large knife Hank remembered from their first meeting, flicking the blade into place as he jerked it out of his boot. Hank stepped backward, afraid that Yohji was planning to use the knife on him, and he eyed the door, as if he was trying to decide whether he should make a run for it, and, if he did, whether he would make it before the blonde was on him. Yohji ignored him, though, and bent over Aya once more. He gently slid the knife beneath the redhead's sweat shirt and tugged slightly upward, until the material parted like hot butter under the sharp blade. He carefully cut away the material, until he had exposed the ugly, gaping hole in Aya's side, and then he bent down to examine it more closely. Hank could hear him muttering curses under his breath as he poked and prodded at the wound.

Aya groaned, whimpered, and tried to scoot away from Yohji as the blonde's hands moved gently over his injured side.

"Shhh," Yohji hissed, gripping the redhead's shoulder to make him be still. "If you can hear me, Aya, you have to lie still, or the bullet will move." He paused long enough for Aya to stop squirming away from him, and then continued his examination of the wound. "Shit, you're a fucking mess," he whispered. "I shoulda just left you outside in that pile of garbage, for all the trouble you're causing me."

The words sounded harsh, but Hank could see the fond smile that barely crossed the blonde's mouth, and Yohji's last statement was immediately followed by a whispered plea, "You're not going to fucking die on me, Aya. You're not."

Just as Hank started to move forward, to offer what assistance he could, the kettle whistled, signaling that the water inside was finally boiling. Yohji left Aya long enough to cross the short distance to the stove. He never looked at Hank; it was almost as if he had forgotten about the other man's presence in the room. He touched the kettle lid, barely stifling a cry of pain when he burned his fingers. He jerked his hand away, although his fingers dragged the lid off, sending it to the floor with a rather loud clang. Hissing and muttering under his breath, Yohji grabbed a cup towel off of the counter, and, after he dropped the knife into the boiling water, he used the towel to pick up the hot lid and replace it on the kettle. He turned his back to the stove, leaning back against the counter closest to the appliance, and gave Hank a narrow-eyed glare, as if he had just remembered that the other man was there with him. Internally, Hank cringed away from the hard, angry look in Yohji's eyes, but he resolutely stood his ground and refused to physically move away. He hoped, for the millionth time since his two former employers' sudden arrival at his apartment, that the fear he felt didn't show on his face or in his eyes. Apparently, it didn't, because the tall blonde shrugged slightly and then fumbled in his pocket for a few seconds, eventually drawing out a package of cigarettes. He shook out one of the smokes, and lit it, cupping his hands around his lighter's flame. He took a couple of long drags on the cigarette, holding the smoke in his mouth for a few seconds before blowing it out in a long, white stream that hovered in the air around his head like a stringy cloud before dissipating. Yohji removed the cigarette from his mouth and flicked the ashes off of the end of it with his pinky before replacing it and taking another long drag. Hank watched the ashes descend to the floor. It took them so long to fall that he almost felt like he was watching it happen in slow motion.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Yohji sighed and asked, "You got medical supplies?"

"What?" Hank asked. He had the terrible feeling he was running as fast as he could, but that he'd still never catch up to Yohji. "What happened? What what's going on here?"

Yohji looked back toward the redhead lying on the table. He flicked more ashes onto the floor and sighed out, in a tired voice, "Aya he's been shot. Bullet's still in him. I'm going to have to take it out." He sighed and then continued, irritably, "Do you have medical supplies?"

Hank stared at him for a few seconds, until Yohji ducked his head, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows in an irritated, questioning gesture. At that moment, he shook his head, as if he could make this all go away by simply clearing his mind, and replied, "No."

Yohji sighed irritably. He took another long drag from the cigarette, flicked more ashes onto the floor, and turned to fumble around on the counter for a piece of paper and a pencil. Once he had located the desired items, he quickly wrote some things down, and then, just as quickly, crossed the floor to stand in front of Hank. He grabbed the Texan's shirt to prevent him from escaping when Hank tried to back away from him, and he shoved the scribbled list into Hanks' hand.

"Then, go." When Hank still stood there, staring at him, he sighed and flicked more ashes onto the floor before releasing his hold on the Texan's shirt and saying, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world, "Go get that stuff."

"Wait just a damn minute!" Hank snapped. "You'd better tell me what the fuck is going on, and I mean right now!"

Yohji whirled away from him and walked the few steps it took for him to stand in between Hank and the table where Aya still lay. "What's going on is this," he hissed, "Aya and me well, all of us, really, are involved in some very bad shit with some very bad people. And, now, you are, too. Aya he thinks that you don't know what you're involved with, that you don't know about any of this, and that you you had a good reason for what you did." He paused, as Hank stared at him, his mouth dropping open in shock and surprise, and said, with a little chuckle, "Oh, yeah Aya knows what you did, that you were the one who betrayed him. It couldn't have been anyone else, you see?" He walked around to the other side of the table, so that it was now in between him and Hank, and leaned his weight against it, on outstretched arms, palms flat against its surface, and continued, "Me? Oh, I wanted to kill you. I wanted nothing more than to choke the life out of you for what you'd done to him, to feel your life ending under my hands." He looked up briefly at Hank and smiled at the frightened expression he saw on the man's face. "Oh, and I I could have done it, too. But, Aya Aya thought you had a good reason. Now, though, Aya he's being hunted, you see? Because of things I did because of things you did. Even if even if we had good reasons, it won't matter, if he dies. It won't matter at all. You see, I didn't I didn't want to come here, but there wasn't any other choice, because they don't know about you. They won't find us here, at least, not right away, and that'll give us the time we need time I need to help him. And, if you don't get off your ass and go get those fucking supplies so I can dig this bullet out of him well, he's gonna bleed to death, and you," he looked up at Hank with a frightening, evil little smile, and continued, "you, my friend, will get to see what Heaven looks like or Hell who knows where you might actually go." He paused and looked down at Aya's still, limp figure, and whispered, as he gently smoothed the redhead's bangs out of his face, "Because, you see, Aya is the only reason you're still alive. If he dies nothing will save you." He straightened then, and said, in a quiet, frightening voice, "So, I'd advise you to get me whatever I want. You'll help me keep him alive. You were part of getting him into this mess, and, now, you're gonna be part of getting him out of it."

Hank glanced down at the list he still had clutched in his hand. "B but, I I don't know where to get this stuff," he stammered.

Yohji glared at him. "Beg, borrow, steal, or give birth to it. I don't care. But, you'd better get it and get it fast, if you want to stay alive."

Hank stared at Yohji for a second, and then muttered, "I'll I'll be back as soon as I can. Just just let me grab a coat."

As he pulled on his coat and headed out the door, he heard Yohji mutter after him, "Good idea. You wouldn't want to catch a cold or anything."

*****************************************************

Yohji pulled one of the table's chairs next to it and sat down heavily, leaning his elbows on the tabletop and resting his head in the cupped palms of his hands. He knew Hank had only left about ten minutes ago, but it seemed like the man had been gone forever, almost as if he had never existed in this world, to begin with. Yohji sat at that table and watched his unconscious friend until his whole world seemed to swirl, like water running down a drain, and then coalesce into nothing more than the two of them and this kitchen. Nothing existed in this world except this one moment, this one small place, which contained only this table and his badly injured friend, and there were no sounds except for the kettle's soft whistling, and Aya's ruptured, strained breathing. Yohji stared at Aya and willed, with all his strength, the redhead to keep breathing, to keep living. Each time Aya struggled to take a shallow breath, there would be a heart-wrenchingly long pause afterward, and, each time, Yohji would hold his own breath, as if, by doing that, he could encourage the redhead to continue living, letting it out in a long sigh of relief when another shaking breath finally came from Aya to break the eerie silence.

Yohji finally rested his head on the table, pillowing it on his crossed arms. He was surprised to feel hot tears gathering in his eyes and, then, spilling down his cheeks. He hadn't even realized he was crying, but, now that he knew, he also knew he wouldn't be able to stop. The tears would continue to come, unbidden, for as long as they wanted, and he was powerless to do anything about it, just like, deep inside, he knew he was powerless to keep Aya alive. He had been around enough death to realize that Aya's making it was a long shot. The redhead was already weak from the injuries he had suffered during Schuldich's recent attack, not to mention that he hadn't ever fully recovered from the pneumonia he had caught out in the rain on that last mission. Yohji had known, the moment he had seen the wound, that it was bad. The bullet was still inside, lodged up against one of Aya's ribs; he had felt it there, and it was in a very bad place. Plus, Aya had already lost so much blood. From the looks of the stains covering his sweat shirt, it appeared the wound had bled almost continuously. Yohji had managed to get it to stop, once they had arrived here, but it could well prove to be a case of too little, too late.

Maybe that was why he was crying, or, maybe it was just a result of all of the pent-up anger and frustration he'd felt for the past few months; Yohji didn't really know, and, at this point, he didn't really care. He did know, though, that he hadn't been able to protect Aya --- not from Schuldich, not from Kritiker, and not even from himself. And, that last thought, the realization that he was so greatly at fault in Aya's current predicament, stung the most --- almost as much as the realization that he really couldn't do anything about it; he couldn't do anything to make it better, to make it go away, to fix it. Right now, all he could do was sit here in this little, dingy kitchen, listen to the sound of the kettle whistling on the stove, wish for Aya to not die, and pray that God or someone heard him.

Yohji thought about that for a minute, and wondered when, exactly, he had stopped believing in God. He hadn't even realized it, but, now that he thought about it, it seemed like he hadn't believed for a very, very long time. He remembered, when he was a kid, his mom would take him to church; hell, he'd even been in the choir. Yeah, Yohji Kudou, a choir boy ---- what a fucking joke, right? He could also remember, when he was a bit older, in his teens, maybe, searching for answers, for some sort of "truth", for something to believe in, some universal force that guided people and cared for them and protected the weak and the sick from the strong and the unscrupulous, some universal good that cared what happened to you ---- whether it was called God, or Buddha, or Allah. But, he hadn't found it. Instead, he had found Weiss, and, down that path, the path he was on now, there wasn't anything except death, and more death. Now, though, Yohji desperately wanted to believe, and, for all the good it would do him, considering the many sins he must have on his hands, not to mention that Aya's hands weren't exactly clean, either, he sent his desperate plea heavenward --- that Aya would survive this, just as he had survived so many other things during his life.

"He's strong," Yohji muttered, almost under his breath, and to no one in particular, since there wasn't anyone else in the room with him, except for Aya, who wasn't really in any condition to hold a conversation. He looked toward the ceiling and repeated, "He's strong. You hear me? He's been through worse, you know, and, even after everything, he's still a good man. This wasn't his choice. It wasn't any of our choices. It wasn't a life we wanted. It's not fair to make it end like this, to make him pay for something that wasn't his fault, and that he never wanted, to begin with."

But, even as he said it, something whispered in his mind that it might not have been something they chose, but, still, none of them had ever tried to walk away; none of them had ever tried to stop doing Persia's bidding, to stop killing, even though they, surely, had to know it was wrong. Yohji frowned and waved his hand in disgust at the little voice, hoping to silence it. What was it, anyhow? A conscience? He'd have thought he would have lost that long ago but, still, it was there, whispering to him --- things that he didn't want to hear, things that he knew, but didn't want to know.

Yohji waved his hand at the pesky little voice one more time, and muttered, "Shut the hell up. I sure don't need to hear from you now."

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, until his head hung over its back, and he stared at the ceiling. He pulled out another cigarette, but, instead of lighting it, he only rolled it around in his fingers before putting it, unlit, into his mouth. Yohji put one hand over his face, so that he was looking at the ceiling through the spaces between his fingers, and smiled as he thought that, if Aya died, he would definitely kill Hank. He wasn't sure, but he figured he had made up his mind about that a long time ago --- possibly right after Schuldich attacked the redhead. In Yohji's mind, it was just inevitable that he would end up taking Hank's life, as if he and their former employee were joined together by some invisible thread of fate.

Yohji hadn't really had anything against the other man, not until he had betrayed Aya. He had even liked the amiable Texan, but, now, when he thought about killing him, he found he was sort of looking forward to it. That was an unsettling thought; he had become so used to killing that he didn't even dread taking the life of someone who had been his friend. He thought about Ken, and how the ex-goalie had been so heart broken at killing his old friend, Kase, even after the guy had betrayed him so many times, and about how Omi had been reluctant to kill his brother, even after everything the guy had done to him, and he wondered if, maybe, he wasn't like them, if, maybe, he wasn't as good of a person as they were. Suddenly, he realized that he really hadn't ever had any misconceptions about the kind of person he was; there was no way he could be a good person and do what he did. Good people didn't kill other people, that's all there was to it, even if they thought they had a good reason for it. But, did that mean that Ken, Omi, and, even Aya, were bad people? After all, they killed, too.

Then, Yohji's mind drifted across a stray memory --- a dark alley, months ago, where he had silenced Weiss' target, only to realize that the man's little daughter had seen him. He could still see the look of fear and pain in the little girl's eyes, and he still felt sick over it. He hadn't ever told any of the other guys, and he had buried the memory so deeply that he had almost forgotten about it completely. No wonder; it was still too new, too raw, but, he remembered how he had grieved over destroying that little girl's life, grieved like he hadn't thought he was capable of doing, and he realized he wasn't any different from the rest of them. None of them were really good, but, maybe, they weren't really bad, either. So, what did that make them? If Aya was conscious, he knew the redhead would glare at him, shake his head, and tell him to not think on it too much; they were just necessary, that's all. A necessary evil --- that was what Aya always called them.

Still, Yohji couldn't help but wonder whether or not the fact that he felt, very strongly, that he would be able to kill Hank so easily meant that he could also kill Omi, or Ken, or, even, Aya. After all, Hank was his friend once, just like the rest of his team, and he didn't even bat an eye at the thought of killing the Texan. Did that mean he'd hunt down the others, at Persia's order? In his heart, Yohji knew he'd never be able to do that, even if it meant his own death at Kritiker's hands. The other three --- Ken, Omi, and, especially, Aya --- they were more than his friends; they were the only family he'd had for a long time, now. He felt a little better at realizing that he wouldn't be able to kill the rest of Weiss; maybe that meant he wasn't a total shit, after all. But Hank Hank was different. Yohji knew he'd kill that man, and he'd enjoy doing it, too, and that thought still scared him a little.

His little voice, or conscience, or whatever it was, whispered into his mind that killing Hank wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't make Aya well; it wouldn't take away the harm that had been done to the redhead, and, if Aya died, it wouldn't bring him back. But, Yohji shook his head at the pesky noise.

"Shut up," he told the little voice. "It won't change anything, but it'll sure as hell make me feel better." Suddenly, he realized that that one thought probably cancelled out all his previous prayers and well-wishes for Aya's health, and he scowled and muttered, "Shit. No wonder I'm not a good person. It's too fucking hard."

He sat there for at least twenty minutes more, trying hard not to think of anything, because he had already found that being lost in his own thoughts was too painful. Finally, when he heard Hank's keys rattle in the door lock, he sighed in relief and pushed into a standing position to face the other man, as he entered the apartment.

*********************************************************

Getting the bullet out wasn't easy. Yohji's hand shook as he used his knife to cut into Aya's flesh. Luckily, the redhead was so out of it that he didn't struggle or even make a sound as the blade cut through him to reach the bullet. Aya seemed to not even feel it at all, and Yohji wasn't sure if that was a good thing, or not. Once he had cut deep enough to reach it, he had found the damn bullet had actually shattered on impact. Part of it was lodged against Aya's rib, as he had first suspected, but part had also pierced his lung, and another part had shied away from the rib to burrow deeper into the redhead's body. It seemed to take forever to dig out all the fragments. Even after he had dumped them all into the bowl Hank had provided and reconstructed them into a whole bullet, Yohji still wasn't confident he'd gotten all the pieces. To make matters worse, the wound started to bleed again, and he had the hardest time getting it to stop. For a while, he had a sinking feeling he wasn't going to be able to stop the bleeding this time, and, for a few very scary moments, Aya stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating, and Yohji thought that they had finally lost him. In the end, he managed to bring the redhead back, but he didn't know whether Aya had the strength to pull through this or not.

Still, he knew had done all he could, for the moment, so he carefully mended the internal damage to the best of his ability, after which he carefully sewed up the wound, all the while mentally cursing himself, Hank, Kritiker, and everyone else who had made it impossible for him to take Aya to a hospital for proper treatment. The redhead deserved a lot more than an incompetent patch job on a dirty kitchen table, but fate seemed to be conspiring against them at every turn. He knew he should have just taken Aya to the hospital, no matter the consequences, but, deep inside, he knew that doing so would have sealed his friend's fate. Even if he avoided Kritiker's private medical facilities, he knew the hospitals would be one of the first places the organization would look for them, and Yohji knew Aya would have been dead before he even made it off the surgical table.

As he pulled the last stitch taut and then tightly bandaged the wound, Yohji looked up to see Hank watching him. The other man wore the strangest look on his face --- a mixture of fear, relief, worry, and, even awe. He frowned at Hank and asked, "What?"

"No nothing," Hank stammered, still very afraid of Yohji. "It's just I can't believe you just did that. Took a bullet out of him like it was nothing. What kind of fucking florist are you, anyhow?"

Yohji rolled his eyes and said, as he pulled the bandage tight and fastened it off, "Crappy. I'm a crappy florist. Frankly, I don't even like flowers." He paused and looked back toward Hank, and, seeing a question still lingering in the man's eyes, he decided to grace him with an answer. "It's not the first time that I've pulled a bullet out of someone," he said, moving to the sink to wash his hands. Over the sound of the running water, he continued, "It's not even the first time I've taken a bullet out of Aya. He gets into a lot of trouble, you know."

Hank realized he wasn't going to get any more of an explanation from the tall blonde, so he simply said, "Hnh. So, what comes now?"

Yohji turned from the sink, drying his hands on the cup towel that had been lying on the counter, and said, "Now we wait, and hope that he wakes up."

**To be continued in "Redemption" ...**

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End file.
